Author: Jack

Mythical Picks – NFL – Weekend Of 12/11/16

 

Last week was another mythically profitable weekend for the NFL picks.  I made 15 selections and the record for the week was a tidy 10-5-0.  The record for the season now stands at 112-65-4.

The Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol made 2 selections last week and did exactly what one would expect from a coin flip.  The week’ record was 1-1-0; that makes the coin’s season record 14-10-2.

The Best Picks from last week were:

  • Lions +6 against Saints.  Lions won outright by 15 points.
  • Seahawks -7 against Panthers.  Seahawks won by 33 points.

The Worst Picks from last week were:

  • Jets “pick’em” against Colts.  Colts won 41-10
  • Dolphins +3 against Ravens.  Ravens won by 32 points.
  • Niners +1 against Bears.  Bears won by 20 points.

Lest anyone take the wrong message from the success of Mythical Picks last week or from the record for the season, there is nothing authoritative or insightful that goes into these selections.  Only a very stupid person would use anything here as the basis for making a real wager involving real money on a real NFL game this weekend or any other weekend for that matter.  Here is how dumb you would have to be to do something like that:

 

You think Baba Ghanoush is some guy who cuts hair in Boston.

 

General Comments:

 

I am a planner; my long-suffering wife has come to think that I would plan for Armageddon if given the opportunity; I recognize that it is not an endearing quality, but as Popeye the Sailor often said:

“I yam what I yam.”

Given my bent for planning ahead, I am pleased tip my hat to a devoted Cleveland Browns’ fan for his efforts to organize a parade for the Browns’ team to celebrate the team going 0-16 for the NFL season.  According to a report in USA Today, a Browns’ fan named Chris McNeil has sent a letter to the city fathers in Cleveland to hold a “peaceful parade” on Jan 7 2017 that “will be a celebration of our Cleveland Browns’ historic 0-16 season.”

You can find all the info you need about this event – should you want to venture off to Cleveland next month to participate in this celebratory affair – at this link.

With all the BYE Weeks in the rear-view mirror, the NFL season heads into the final quarter of the season.  Four of the 8 divisions would appear to have interesting races to see who will be the division winner and automatically get to the playoffs.  A fifth division could get interesting; the other three divisions are pretty much decided.

Here are the “decided divisions”:

 

AFC East:  Pats have a 3-game lead over the Dolphins with 4 games left.

NFC East:  Cowboys have a 3-game lead over the Giants with 4 games left.

NFC West:  Seahawks have a 3-game lead over the Cards with 4 games left.

 

Here are the divisions with “interesting races”:

 

AFC North:  The Steelers and the Ravens have the same record (7-5) and both are playing good football lately.  The Ravens have a tougher schedule ahead with 3 of their 4 remaining games on the road but there is a head-to-head showdown between these teams in Pittsburgh on Christmas Eve.

AFC South:  The Texans, Colts and Titans all have a 6-6 record this morning.  The Texans have 3 division games left to play in their 4 remaining games; the Colts and Titans each have 2 division games on tap.

AFC West:  The Raiders hold a 1-game lead on the Chiefs and those two teams play tonite; the Broncos are 2 games out of the lead but are not out of the race because they still have head-to-head games with both the Raiders and the Chiefs on the schedule.

NFC South:  The Falcons and Bucs are tied atop the division at 7-5 and the Bucs have won 4 games in a row.  The Falcons’ schedule is a bit easier given that the Bucs have to play a game on the road against the Cowboys.

 

Here is division where the race “might get interesting”:

 

NFC North:  The Lions lead the Vikes and the Packers by 2 games with 4 left to play.  The Lions are hot; they have won 4 in a row.  On the other hand, if you look at historical precedent; these are the Lions after all and they have often found ways to go south at the least advantageous moment…

Last week, the Cowboys beat the Vikes 17-15 on Thursday night.  The Vikes’ defense kept the Cowboys’ offense in check for most of the game but the Vikes’ offense was too limited to take advantage of that strong defensive effort.  Yes, the Vikes were hosed on the final 2-point conversion attempt that would have tied the game; there is no question about that.  Replay showed clearly that the officials missed 2 calls on the same play:

  1. First, there was a false start by the Vikes’ offensive right tackle which should have blown the play dead before it started and the Vikes should have been forced to try the conversion attempt once again but from the 12 yardline and not the 7 yardline.
  2. Second, if the officials did not blow the play dead as they should have, then there was a clear penalty on the Cowboys for a “blow to the head” of the QB which was also a shot to his facemask.

It is not correct to say that those officiating blunders “cost” the Vikes the game; even a successful 2-point conversion – not a certainty to be sure – would only have created an overtime situation where the Vikes may or may not have prevailed.  However, it is correct to say that once again the officials botched an important play in a game.

Here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald about the officiating in the Cowboys/Vikings game:

“To give you an idea how many calls referees supposedly missed during Thursday Night Football, the opening coin toss that the refs said was heads was actually tails.”

The Pats beat the Rams 26-10.  Tom Brady got his 201st win as a starting QB in this game; it was never in doubt that would be the outcome.  Jeff Fisher got a 2-year contract extension late last week and then the Rams went out and dropped a stinkbomb on the field in Foxboro.  At halftime, the Rams had amassed a total of 25 yards on offense and made exactly 1 first down.  It got better in the second half but not all that much better.  The Rams managed only 162 yards’ offense for the entire game.

Here is what I do not understand.  The Rams are competent when it comes to signing/drafting/developing defensive players.  On offense, the opposite is true.  Forget coaching; the players on the offensive units for the Rams in recent years have been mediocre players and the Rams have gotten mediocre offensive results.  How can that situation continue to obtain?

The Chiefs beat the Falcons 29-28.  Talk about inventing a way to lose a game…  Eric Berry had a Pick Six to put the Chiefs in position to make this a game to go down to the wire.  Then the Falcons get a TD to go up 28-27 and Berry gets a “Pick Two” intercepting the 2-point conversion and taking it back 100 yards for a 2-point score by the Chiefs.  The only way Berry would not be named Defensive Player of the Week would be if Godzilla were playing defensive line for some team last Sunday.  In addition, the normally buttoned-up Andy Reid ran a fake punt that went for a TD in the second half of this game.

There was an interesting coaching decision by the Falcons in the third quarter that impacted the way the game ended.  The Falcons trailed by 11 points with about 8 minutes to play in the 3rd quarter and had a 4th and 1 at the Chiefs’ 10 yardline.  The Falcons went for it and failed; instead of possibly trailing by 8 points, they still trailed by 11.  Ergo, when the Falcons scored a TD in the 4th quarter to bring the score to 27-22, they had to go for a 2-point PAT which failed.  Ergo, when the Falcons scored again to take the lead 28-27 with about 4 minutes left in the game, they again had to go for a 2-point PAT to try to extend the lead to 3 points.  That was the point at which Eric Berry executed the “Pick Two” …

The Bengals beat the Eagles 32-14.  That may look like a shellacking to you but you need to realize that the score was 29-0 at one point.  The final score represents a “rally” from the Eagles…  For reasons known only to the offensive braintrust of the Eagles, they had Carson Wentz throw the ball 60 times in this game.  When rookie QBs throw that often, good things tend to happen for the other team.

The Steelers beat the Giants 24-14.  The Steelers’ defense has not been the dominant unit this year but they throttled the Giants on Sunday holding the Giants to less than 100 yards’ offense in the first half.  The Steelers cruised to a win.  LeVeon Bell ran for 118 yards in the game to control the clock and field position.  Steelers had to sign a new kicker on Friday when Chris Boswell suffered an abdominal injury; Randy Bullock was 3-for-3 on field goal tries here and 1 for 1 on PATs in this game.

The Cards beat the Skins 31-21.  Carson Palmer drank from the Fountain of Youth last week.  He threw for 300 yards and 3 TDs (30 for 46) and 0 INTs.  The Cards converted on 10 of 16 third down attempts.  The Skins had a chance to tie in the final 2 minutes down 8 points with the ball on the Cards’ 29 yardline.  An untimely INT put an end to that comeback.  This loss puts Skins at 6-5-1 and looking up at 2 wildcard teams in the NFC (Giants and Bucs).  Cards are 5-6-1 and probably need to win the NFC West to get to the playoffs.  With the Seahawks sitting at 8-3-1 with 4 games left, that looks like a real longshot.

The Bucs beat the Chargers 28-21.  The Bucs are now the #2 wildcard team in the NFC.  They intercepted Philip Rivers twice in the second half to overcome a 14-10 deficit at halftime.  The Bucs have won 4 in a row and the last 3 have come over the Chiefs, Seahawks and Chargers – three good teams.

The Raiders beat the Bills 38-24.  The Bills led the game 24-9 at one point and then their world turned upside down.  Tyrod Taylor turned the ball over twice in the 4th quarter and the Raiders came from behind to win the game convincingly.

The Lions beat the Saints 28-13.  For the first time this season, the Lions won without having to come from behind in the 4th quarter.  Drew Brees did not throw a TD pass in a home game and it has been a while since that happened (61 games ago since 2009).  Brees did throw 3 INTs though.  The Lions lead the NFC North but have a difficult schedule ahead of them (versus the Bears, then at Giants, at Cowboys, versus the Packers).  The Saints are not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs; but in reality, the Saints are gonzo.

The Packers beat the Texans 21-13.  This loss drops the Texans into a tie with the Titans who had the week off.; it is the third loss in a row for the Texans.  The win puts the Packers back in the wildcard race in the NFC.  The game was not really this close; the Texans scored a TD with less than 2 minutes to play in the game.

The Broncos beat the Jags 20-10.  Paxton Lynch played QB for the Broncos in this game; the coaches must have figured that if the Denver defense could not hold the Jags down to a manageable number, that defense must be a mirage.  Lynch was – to be polite – awful (12 for 24 for 102 yards) and the team generated only 206 yards’ offense.  The fundamental question about this game is this:

  • Did the Denver defense dominate Blake Bortles to win this game or did Bortles just stink out the joint has he has done at multiple venues in the past?

Bortles was 19 of 42 for 182 yards and 2 INTs.  That is only a 45% completion rate…  Oh, and he lost a fumble too.  Oh, and one of his INTs was a Pick Six…

You should have noticed by now that there were more than a few games from last week that were decided by more than one score.  However, I have saved the three biggest mismatches from last week for now…

The Seahawks beat the Panthers 40-7.  Watching the game, it looked like a 40-7 game; it felt like a 40-7 game.  The Panthers appeared to be going through the motions and not much else.  They only managed to throw for 182 yards despite being well behind for much of the game and needing to catch up.  The Seahawks lost safety Earl Thomas in the game to a broken bone in his leg.  That is a big loss.  The Seahawks offense came to life – against a not-so-inspired Panthers’ defense to the tune of 534 yards’ total offense.

The Colts beat the Jets 41-10.  A late Jets’ TD narrowed the margin of victory here.  Like the Panthers, the Jets did not seem to be giving maximum effort for much of the game particularly on defense.  The Jets went with Bryce Petty at QB in 2nd half; reports say Petty will start in the last 4 games this year.   Here is my assessment of Bryce Petty based on watching him for half of this game:

  • Oh my; he does indeed have a lot to learn if “NFL QB” is the career path he has chosen for himself.

And what does that say about Christian Hackenberg who has not shown enough in practice to be considered a “development project” to the point where it is time to expose him to “the real thing”…?  But it is OK to throw Bryce Petty out there to see what he can do?  The Jets are not in a good place…

The Bears beat the Niners 24-6.  That score may not seem as lopsided as some others but the Niners’ performance was laughable.  Two weeks ago, Colin Kaepernick looked like he might be a good fit in an evolving Chip Kelly offense in SF.  Last week, Kaepernick got benched in favor of Blaine Gabbert – who pretty much has shown that he is not going to be a good fit in an evolving Chip Kelly offense in SF.  Total passing offense for Niners was this:

  • 5 for 15 for 39 yards.  That is the gross passing yardage.  When you account for yards lost on six sacks, the net passing yardage for the Niners was 6 yards.

The Niners’ total offense for the day was 147 yards.

All reports are that the new stadium for the Niners in Santa Clara is heartily disliked by fans; I don’t know all the ins and outs as to why that is the case, but there are sufficient reports to believe it is so.  So, if the fans hate the stadium and the Niners are the team that will play there 8 times next year, what would make the Niners’ Front Office think they are going to keep up whatever season ticket base they now have?    Here is a link to excellent column by Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle regarding the Niners’ ownership and GM:

 

The Games:

 

(Thurs Nite) Oakland at KC – 3.5 (46):  This is the Game of the Week and it is on Thursday Night Football.  Let me just say that those two things tend not to go together – sort of like mustard and vanilla ice cream.  The Chiefs need this game to tie the Raiders in the AFC West race; a win for the Raiders would put them up 2 games on the Chiefs with only 3 game left to play.  It is a “revenge game” for the Raiders since one of their losses this year was to the Chiefs with the game in Oakland.  I think the Raiders will get their revenge here so I will take the Raiders plus the points.

 

Denver at Tennessee (no lines):  I guess folks are waiting to see which Denver QB will start this game.  I do not know of any other significant variable related to the game.  Since I have nothing to say about this game, let me provide you with a meaningless trend:

  • Titans are 12-37-3 against the spread in their last 52 games.

 

San Diego at Carolina – 1.5 (48):  Short and sweet here …  After watching the Panthers not give a damn last week, I wonder if they can summon up any emotion here.  Last week, they were taking on a top-shelf opponent and they were flatter than Kansas.  Here they take on a team from the other conference that is sub-.500 just like the Panthers are.  I sense another sleepwalking effort so I’ll take the Chargers plus the point-and-a-half.

 

Houston at Indy – 6 (46.5):  The winner here will – at worst – be tied for the lead in the AFC South.  There are some conflicting trends at work here:

  • Texans are 7-0-1 against the spread in their last 8 against the AFC South
  • Colts are 19-6-2 against the spread in their last 27 against the AFC South

The Colts are at home and the Colts have the significantly better QB under center.  The Colts’ defense looked very good last week – – but calm down here; that showing was against a listless and uninterested Jets’ team (see above).  The Texans are 1-5 on the road this year and I just do not trust them in this situation.  I’ll take the Colts to win and cover.

 

Cincy – 5 at Cleveland (43):  About the only good news with regard to the Browns in this spot would be:

  • They had last week off to game plan and recuperate.
  • The Bengals have lost AJ Green and Giovanni Bernard to injury.

The Bengals are highly disappointing this year – despite last week’s spanking of the Eagles (see above) – but they are simply a better team than the Browns.  Unless the Bengals play with no emotion at all, they should cruise here.  I like the Bengals on the road to win and cover.

 

Pittsburgh – 2 at Buffalo (46.5):  This game means a lot to the Steelers; the Bills are pretty much out of the playoff chase and so this game is about “pride” and “heart” and all that stuff for them.  Call this a “Pedigree Pick”.  The Steelers are habitually in the playoffs and the Bills are not.  The Steelers’ coach has won a Super bowl; the Bills’ coach swears his team will win one every year.  The Steelers’ QB has been the MVP in the Super Bowl; the Bills’ QB is a ham-and-egger.  I like the Steelers to win and cover here.

 

Arizona at Miami – 1 (43.5):  The Dolphins saw their 6-game win streak go down the drain last week while the Cards surprised me and beat the Skins.  (I liked the Skins straight up to win the game.)  Neither team excites me at all; both QBs are up one week and down the next; both teams have – and rely on – an excellent running back; neither defense is great; neither defense is atrocious.  This is a Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol Game and the coin says to take the game to go OVER.

 

Chicago at Detroit – 7.5 (43.5):  The spread opened the week at 9.5 points and has settled down at this level for the past 36 hours.  The Bears scored 26 points last week; that was their highest point production of the season.  The last time these teams met – October 2 – the Bears won 17-14; since then the Bears are 2-6; since then the Lions are 7-1.  Here are countervailing trends for these teams:

  • Bears are 4-9 against the spread in their last 13 against the Lions
  • Lions are 4-9 against the spread in their last 13 against the NFC North.

So, there …  That line looks fat to me; I’ll take the Bears plus the points.

 

Minnesota – 3 at Jax (39.5):  The Vikes’ defense is for real; the Jags’ offense led by Blake Bortles is a turnover machine.  Only Santa Claus will be handing out more gifts in December than Bortles.  The Vikes also need this game to stay in the playoff picture.  I’ll take the Vikes and lay the points.

 

New Orleans at Tampa – 2.5 (51):  The Bucs are hot; they have won 4 in a row.  The Saints are lukewarm; they won last week but sport a 5-7 record for the season.  Drew Brees is not going to be held without a TD pass for the second week in a row and he is not likely to throw 3 INTs either.  I smell a shootout coming.  I like the game to go OVER.

 

Washington at Philly “pick ‘em” (46.5):  OK, I’ll “pick ‘em”…  I like the Skins to win this game notwithstanding the Eagles’ 4-1 record at home.

 

Jets at SF – 2.5 (44):  This is the Dog-Breath Game of the Week – and it is the kind of dog-breath that exists just after the dog has discovered and sampled the rotting carcass of a now-unidentifiable mammal in the back yard.  Please see above for what both of these teams did to leave gigantic road apples on the field last week.  The Jets played on Monday night and get to fly about 3000 miles to this game; the Niners gained 6 yards (net) passing for an entire game last week.  Bryce Petty versus either Colin Kaepernick or Blaine Gabbert defines once and for all the phrase:

  • Must Miss TV

Only because I said I would make a pick in every possible game, will I make a pick here.  Actually, I will turn it over to the Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol so that I can stand back from the stench.  The coin says to take the Niners and lay the points.  Remember, the coin said that; I did not say that!

 

Seattle – 3 at Green Bay (46.5):  This is a big game for the Packers and the fact of the matter is that the Seahawks are much better at home than they are on the road.  Weather.com says the temperature will be in the mid-20s around kickoff and this “late afternoon game” will start about 15 minutes after sunset.  I think this will be a defensive game so I’ll take the game to stay UNDER.

 

Atlanta – 6.5 at LA (45):  The Falcons can score points; they lead the NFL in scoring; in fact, the Falcons have scored 41 more points than the second-highest scoring team in the league (Raiders).  The Falcons’ defense is very generous; the Falcons have allowed 331 points so far this year; that is 20 points more than any other team (the Colts) that is at or near the top of their division this week.  The question here is simple:

  • Can the Rams’ rudimentary offense find ways to score on a very porous Falcons’ defense?

I do not think so.  Ergo, I will take the game to stay UNDER because I think the Rams’ defense can keep the Falcons from running amok.

 

(Sun Nite) Dallas – 3 at Giants (47):  This is the best game on Sunday.  I am convinced that the Cowboys are for real; their OL dominates games.  The Giants’ DL took a hit with the news that Jason Pierre-Paul will not play here.  I think the Cowboys will expose and exploit the Giants; I like the Cowboys to win and cover – even on the road.

 

(Mon NIte) Baltimore at New England – 7.5 (45):  This game was the runner up as the Game of the Week; it matches two division leaders who are both playing top-shelf football.  The spread opened the week at 8 points; this morning you can find it as low as 7 points at two Internet sportsbooks.  I think this game will be decided one way of the other by a field goal or less so I’ll take the Ravens plus the points here.

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

 

 

Bad College Bowl Games

It should be no secret around these parts that I do not like the excessive number of college football bowl games.  I really like college football but more is not better in this circumstance.  Good college football involves rivalry games and/or games that have meaning with regard to conference standings or poll placement and/or an intersectional game with two good teams.  Note the emphasis on the word “good” in that last sentence.

This year, there will be 40 bowl games; 80 teams – from a field of 128 Division 1-A teams – will play in bowl games.  Five out of every eight college teams will be in a bowl game.  Those numbers do not add up to “interesting” or “important” or “attractive”.  Most of the games are meaningless wastes of time and energy.  Their role in the grand scheme of things is that they will contribute ever so minutely to the entropy death of the universe.

I have surveyed the field of 40 bowl games.  There are about a half-dozen that meet my criterion of “intersectional game with two good teams” and those games may attract my attention even though they really do not mean a blessed thing.  Penn State versus USC in the Rose Bowl is an example of such a game.  However, there are a bunch of bowl games that just make me shake my head in disbelief such as:

 

Heart of Dallas Bowl:  Army versus North Texas.  OK, it is good to see Army in a bowl game again; it has been a while since that happened.  However, this game is a repeat; these teams already played once in October.  No one – and I mean NO ONE – was clamoring to see an encore when the final whistle blew.  Nonetheless …

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl:  Idaho versus Colorado State.  Here is the only interesting fact related to this game.  Idaho is going to a bowl game for the third time in school history – – and all three of those bowl games have been played in Boise.  Lots of teams get invitations to bowl games that are far from campus in places where the weather is balmy in December.  Idaho gets invited to take a bus ride about 200 miles north to play in Idaho in the winter…

New Mexico Bowl:  New Mexico versus Texas-San Antonio.  New Mexico is playing a home game; the bowl game is played on their home field.  These guys don’t even get to take a 200-mile bus ride to go to this “special event” …  [For the record, this is the third time New Mexico has played a “home game” in the New Mexico Bowl which only came into existence in 2006.]

Quick Lane Bowl:  Maryland versus BC.  [Aside: I dare you to name the venue for this game without peeking.]  Both teams are 6-6; neither team is even marginally interesting to watch.  The organizers of this game could not have a full stadium if they gave out free tickets along with a voucher that the fan could turn in for a $100 bill at stadium concession stands after the final whistle…

St. Petersburg Bowl:  Miami (OH) versus Mississippi St.  Miami is 6-6 and Mississippi St. is 5-7; they needed more teams to fill bowl slots than there were teams with 6 wins this year.  The upshot of this is to root for Mississippi St. in this game so that after this bowl game, both teams will end the season with losing records.  Such fun …

 

There are 3 games that might be interesting enough to go and check out the scores and stats because of the teams involved but I doubt that I will watch more than a couple of minutes of any of them:

 

Military Bowl:  Temple versus Wake Forest.  Wake Forest does not score a lot; their 6-6 record was built on giving up only about 20 points per game.  Temple’s defense has allowed a total of 33 points in its last 5 games and two of those games were shutouts (against UConn and Tulane).  Lots of punting here…

Outback Bowl:  Florida versus Iowa.  If you do not like defense, do not watch this game or pay any attention to it at all.  It would not be a shock to see the final score be 10-9 with the TD coming on a fumble recovery in the end zone…

Holiday Bowl:  Minnesota versus Washington St.  The interest here comes from the diametrically opposite ways these teams approach offensive football.  Minnesota throws the ball only under duress; they have only recorded 8 TD passes in the entire season.  Washington St. on the other hand threw the ball more than 50 times per game on average this year.  It is the “air force” versus the “infantry” here…

 

I will try to watch the Cotton Bowl to see W. Michigan play Wisconsin.  It will be interesting to see how a 13-0 MAC Champion who beat two Big 10 teams this year fares against one of the top teams in the Big 10.  I will watch the Orange Bowl to see Michigan and Florida State slug it out with one another; and as I said above, I will watch Penn St. and USC in the Rose Bowl.

Obviously, I look forward to the two CFP semi-final games on Dec 31.  However, one or both may need to be seen after-the-fact depending on social arrangements made by my long-suffering wife for New Year’s Eve.  That is one of the main reasons that I gave thanks about 2 weeks ago, for the invention of the DVR.

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

 

 

Golf And The Winter Olympics Today …

Over the weekend, Tiger Woods played in the Hero World Challenge golf tournament in the Bahamas.  There was plenty of good news that came from that tournament and because much of it involved Tiger Woods, the media were all over it.  Let me highlight some of the many pieces of good news:

  1. Tiger Woods finished all four rounds of the tournament without having to withdraw and without limping from hole to hole.  He has not done that for a while now; his physical condition seems much improved.
  2. If you are a TV exec and your network carries golf, you have to be thrilled at what happened last weekend and by Woods’ statement that he plans to play again next year.
  3. If you are a PGA Tour exec, you have to be thrilled because your TV revenues are tied to ratings and TV ratings for golf have plummeted since Tiger Woods has been on the shelf.
  4. If you are a golf writer or broadcaster, you have a meal ticket again – someone who can assure that there is never a “slow news day” on your beat.

With all that good news and a sense of euphoria, one wonders why anyone has to take it over the top.  Kyle Porter writes about golf on CBSSports.com; naturally, what he was writing about over the weekend and into Monday all centered around Tiger Woods.  Let me be clear; I do not know Kyle Porter from Cole Porter from Cole Hamels from Dorothy Hamill from Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  I have no reason to like or dislike him or his work.  So why did he have to lead one of his reports with this:

“Tiger Woods’ first tournament back at the Hero World Challenge was a raving success by any feasible metric. Woods led the field in birdies, looked genuinely interested in the event and did not grimace after hitting a single shot.”

Let me address the phrase “…a raving success by any feasible metric.”  I will start by saying “Bulls*it!”  Now let me provide a couple of “feasible metrics”:

  1. There were 17 golfers in the tournament field.  Tiger Woods finished 15th.
  2. In addition to leading the field in birdies, he led the field in double bogeys too.
  3. Woods’ 76 on the final round was the worst round shot by anyone in the field.
  4. The two guys Tiger Woods beat out were Russell Knox and Emiliano Grillo.  I am not sure that even the PGA Tour Commish could pick those two guys out of a lineup with the Smurfs.

There was plenty of good news from the Hero World Challenge.  However, this sort of phony praise and looking at the world through rose colored glasses does not add to the good news; what it does is to diminish it.  Moreover, it diminishes any sense one might have regarding the objectivity of the journalism that under-girds the reporting.

Moving on …  The 2018 Winter Olympics will take place in PyeongChang, South Korea; and as is customary with the way NBC televises Olympic competitions here in the US, there will be saturation.  I do not just mean there will be saturation in the winter of 2018; the saturation starts now.

Last month, NBC began televising some of the test-events leading up to the games on various outlets under the NBC umbrella.  In case you did not know, they have already covered the “big air event” associated with the FIS Snowboard World Cup.  I used quotation marks there because I am not a snowboarding aficionado and could not tell you what the rules are regarding the “big air event”.  To be candid, the phrase “big air event” conjures up in my mind the aftermath of a chow-down at Taco Bell…

But do not worry if you missed the first telecast of these events.  There are eleven more to follow between now and March 2017.  As a public service, let me alert you to the ways you might avail yourselves of this coverage:

“NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app – NBC Sports Group’s live streaming product for desktops, mobile devices, tablets, and connected TVs – will stream coverage. The NBC Sports app will stream coverage via ‘TV Everywhere,’ giving consumers additional value to their subscription service, and making high-quality content available to MVPD customers both in and out of the home and on multiple platforms.”

Consider yourselves alerted and forewarned; I seriously doubt that I will have much more to say about any of the dozen or so events that will air here – – unless of course a serious confrontation between competing teams involving live ammunition comes to a head in the IBU Biathlon World Cup…

Finally, I began today with commentary on the Hero World Challenge golf tournament so let me close with an item from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald about another non-major golf tournament:

“There is a golf tournament in northern Oregon exclusively for marijuana smokers and growers. It’s the second athletic competition of its type. The other, of course, is called the NBA season.”

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

 

 

A New CBA for MLB …

Late last week – at about the eleventh hour – MLB and the MLBPA reached an agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).  There were only about 24 hours left on the old agreement when the bargaining concluded and now it needs to be ratified by the owners and by the players as a whole.  The term of the new CBA would be 5 years which would mean that there would be no threats or danger of strikes, work stoppages, lockouts and the like through 2021.  The last time there was a work stoppage in baseball was in 1995 so when this agreement is ratified, there will be a 26-year period of “labor peace”.

In 2016, the estimated revenue for all of MLB was $9B.  An off-handed interpretation of the new agreement would be that the folks representing the billionaire owners and the folks representing the millionaire players found a way to continue to bathe in the flow of $9B annually.  I am sure there was more to it than that; but when I read about the things that baseball writers and commentators consider noteworthy in the new agreement, I am not so sure that the off-handed interpretation is so wrong.  Let me dispense with a couple of terms in the new CBA that seem self-evident to me:

 

  1. The use of chewing tobacco and other forms of smokeless tobacco is banned in MLB.  Current players who use these products are grandfathered but new players will not be users.  I hope it did not take long for both sides to agree that this was a good idea.
  2. The All-Star Game will no longer determine the home-field advantage for the World Series.  The fact that it ever did was abjectly stupid from the moment it was first uttered aloud.  Home field advantage will now go to the team with the better regular season record which is as it should have been for about a century now.  This issue does not put or take a single penny in or out of either side’s pockets; I hope it did not take long for both sides to reach agreement here.  In algebra class in high school, we all learned that removing a negative number is a positive; therefore, I choose to call this CBA provision the World Series Algebraic Clause.

Missing from the new CBA is a provision to put a pitch clock in MLB games.  Too bad…  They use a pitch clock in minor league games and it seems to work just fine.

There are changes in the rules governing Qualifying Offers for potential free agents.  Briefly, under the old CBA, if a player turned down a Qualifying Offer and then signed with another team as a free agent, the signing team lost a draft pick and the money associated with that pick in the signing bonus pool and took a reduction in the amount it could spend on intentional players.  Now, the “costs” associated with signing such a free agent are scaled.  Teams who are over the luxury tax threshold will lose a second round and a fifth-round draft pick – plus associated money in signing pools – while teams under the luxury tax limit will only lose a third-round pick.  That is the abbreviated version of the changes; if you are interested in the “wherefores” and the “moreovers”, Google is your friend…

Since I mentioned the luxury tax threshold above, that number is going up over the 5 years of this agreement.  In 2016, it was $189M in total payroll per club.  Here is how it changes in the new agreement:

  •             2017: $195M
  •             2018: $197M
  •             2019: $206M
  •             2020: $209M
  •             2021: $210M

Penalties for teams that exceed these new thresholds increase too.  First time “offenders will pay a 20% luxury tax; second time “offenders will pay a 30% tax and third time offenders will pay a 50% tax.  Moreover, there is a new “luxury surtax” for teams that are way over the threshold.

  •             Over by $20M to 40M = 12% surtax
  •             Over by $40M the first time = 40% surtax
  •             Over by $40M the second time = 42.5% surtax.

Th last thing in the new CBA that I find interesting is that “Moneyball” is about to undergo a significant change.  The Oakland A’s have been recipients of the MLB version of revenue sharing based on their low attendance and revenue status.  That is going to change; the A’s are in a large metropolitan area and should not be considered a “small-market team” like Milwaukee or Tampa.  Some reports said that there are owners in MLB who do not think that the A’s have taken the revenue sharing money and plowed it back into “team improvement initiatives” and that those voices prevailed on the MLB side of the bargaining table.  Obviously, I do not know if that is the case or how all of this came about in the new CBA.  However, if those reports are correct, the Oakland A’s are a troubled franchise.

The A’s are clearly the “junior partner” in the Bay Area market.  The Giants drew 3.37M fans in 2016; the A’s drew 1.52M fans in 2016 – second lowest in MLB.  The A’s play in a stadium that would be paid a compliment if one were to call it an upholstered toilet.  They are going to be phased out of the revenue sharing money meaning they will likely be fielding teams for the foreseeable future comprised of young players who are auditioning to go to other teams.

Finally, I used to watch Sesame Street with my kids when they were of an appropriate age for that program.  Every day, the program would be “brought to you” by a letter of the alphabet – and a number – and they would feature words that began with that letter.  Well if you are a Sesame Street alum and an NFL fan, you might conclude that the 2016 season is not being brought to you by the letter “C”.  Four teams in the league are from cities that begin with “C” and here are their records:

  •                         Carolina: 4-8-0
  •                         Chicago: 3-9-0
  •                         Cincy: 4-7-1
  •                         Cleveland: 0-12-0
  •                         TOTAL:  11-36-1

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

 

 

 

Mythical Picks – NCAA – Weekend Of 12/3/16

 

Last week was very profitable – mythically of course – for the NCAA selections.  I made 12 picks and the record for the week was 9-3-0.  Since the start of the 2016 season, the record for NCAA Mythical Picks is 106-88-0.

The Best Picks from last week were;

  • Air Force +9 against Boise St.  Air Force won straight up by 7 points.
  • Washington -6 against Washington St.  Washington won by 28 points.

The Worst Picks from last week were:

  • Georgia/Georgia Tech UNDER 49.  Total Score was 55.
  • Ohio St. -6.5 against Michigan.  Ohio St. won by only 3 in 2 OTs.

As we enter the final week of the college football season, I want to be sure that no one looks at the season record for picks and mistakenly believes that there is any great insight offered here.  Only a dumbass would use any information here as the basis for making a real wager involving real money on a real college football game this weekend.  How dumb would one need to be?

 

If an idea were to pop up into such a person’s mind it would be a very lonely idea indeed…

 

General Comments:

 

The Linfield College Wildcats’ football season ended last weekend with a loss to Mary Hardin-Baylor in the second round of the Division III football playoffs by a score of 27-10.  For the season, Linfield was 10-2 with both losses were to Mary Hardin-Baylor.  Nevertheless, congratulations to the Linfield team for extending the school record of consecutive winning seasons in football that started back in 1956.

The Eastern Washington Eagles play the Central Arkansas Bears in the Division 1-AA playoffs this week.  E. Washington had a BYE in the first round of the tournament; Central Arkansas is here thanks to a win over Illinois St. last week by a score of 31-24.  I have been following the statistical accomplishments of Cooper Kupp at E. Washington at the suggestion of Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times.  Since there are no stats from last week to report, let me review his career stats at E. Washington.  Remember, he is a wide receiver first and foremost:

 

Passing stats:  7 for 9 for 180 yards with 4 TDs and 0 INTs

Rushing stats:  15 carries for 71 yards and 1 TD.

Punt returns:  25 returns for 426 yards and 3 TDs

Kick returns:  4 returns for 71 yards

Receiving stats:  402 catches for 6061 yards and 68 TDs

 

The hiring of Tom Herman by Texas to be their next head football coach has created a bit of news.  I am not talking about the whining that came from someone on the University of Houston Board of Regents; that has all of the gravitas of a leaf blowing in the winter wind.  More interesting to me are the economics involved here.

If the reporting is correct, Texas still owes Charlie Strong $11M despite the fact that he will not be coaching at Texas next year or the year after that or …  If all of the assistant coaches are also terminated – probably a good “football move” if not a good “economic move” – the university would be on the hook for another $7M.  So, the cost of “cleaning house” is $18M which indicates to me that the folks who rushed out to hire Charlie Strong a few years ago when he was the hot young-and-upcoming coach out there might have dabbled in what Alan Greenspan labeled “irrational exuberance”.  Oh, but the economic revelations from this story are not over with that…

Reports say that Tom Herman will make a base salary of $6M a year under the contract that he got from Texas.  Let me be clear; I have no idea if that number is accurate; I have no access to the contract or to anyone who was involved in negotiating that contract.  However, I want to assume for now that he will indeed make $6M per year simply because I want to put that number in context.

On 27 October 2016, USA Today published a list of the “Pay for FBS Coaches” and that listing showed for every school the base pay and the total compensation for all 128 coaches in what I continue to call Division 1-A football.  The listing broke out the compensation as “School Pay” (obvious what that means), “Other Pay” (from other athletic related activities) and “Total Pay”.  The listing also reports the maximum bonus that each coach might earn; I would like to ignore those bonuses because there is no way to know how they are structured in all of the 128 deals here.  I want to focus simply on “Total Pay” – the sum of “School Pay” and “Other Pay”.

Tom Herman will reportedly make $6M per year in “Total Pay”.  I want to assume that is what he will take down next year to coach the Texas Longhorns to put that number in perspective.  Where might $6M in “Total Pay” rank among the 128 coaches on the USA Today list?

  1. Jim Harbaugh – Michigan – $9,004,000
  2. Nick Saban – Alabama – $6,939,395
  3. Urban Meyer – Ohio St. – $6,094,800
  4. Tom Herman – Texas – $6,000,000

That is way up there where the air is rare for a coach who has had exactly 2 years of head coaching experience in a “non-Power 5 conference.”  Indeed, he made Houston into a much better team than it had been previously; his record there was 22-4 and Houston won the AAC Championship in 2015 – Herman’s first year on the job.

I think that sort of pay scale for football coaches says two things:

  1. There is a lot of money pouring into schools and conferences from successful college football teams justifying – to some degree – the sorts of salaries that top-shelf coaches can demand and can get.  When you juxtapose the recognition of the magnitude of those revenue streams, it becomes a bit annoying to recognize also that the US Tax Code allows schools and conferences to be categorized as “non-profits”.
  2. Many people like to worship at the altar of “pay for performance”.  In the situation at Texas – now and with Charlie Strong a couple of years ago – the primary issue certainly appears to be “pay for potential performance” as opposed to “pay for actual performance”.

Good luck to Tom Herman in his Texas endeavors.  I have no reason to root for or against him in those endeavors.  I would note however, that if the big-money boosters there are willing to eat $18M to “clean house” this year, they may just be willing to do it again in a couple of years if the results are not up to the “potential performance” that they think they are buying with this deal.

In other coaching news, LSU hired Ed Orgeron on a permanent basis.  But that raises a question.  When Mike MacIntyre took over at Colorado, the team was bordering on a laughingstock and was completely outclassed in the PAC-12.  This year, Colorado is the PAC-12 South Division champ and will play Washington this weekend for the PAC-12 championship.  In the past 3 years, Colorado won a total of 10 games; this year they are 10-2 with the 2 losses coming on the road at Michigan and at USC.  So, why is Mike MacIntyre not one of the “hot coaching prospects” this year but Tom Herman and Ed Orgeron and Jeff Tedford are?

About 50 years ago, Simon and Garfunkel sang:

“Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you …”

Based on last week’s college football results, they might think about updating those lyrics to something along these lines:

“Where have you gone football defenses?

Have you done any tackling drills this year …?”

I want to review a few game scores and present some of the stats from those games to provide some reason for Simon and Garfunkel to think about new lyrics.

Navy beat SMU 75-31.  SMU led 24-21 late in the first half; then, Navy scored 47 unanswered points.  Total offense for both teams was 1051 yards; Navy ran the ball for 496 yards.

Middle Tennessee St. beat Florida Atlantic 77-56.  Total offense combined in this game was 1346 yards; the combined rushing yardage was 794 yards; the teams combined to make 63 first downs in the game.

New Mexico beat Wyoming 53-35.  Total offense combined in this game was 1139 yards; New Mexico ran the ball 46 times for 568 yards (a mere 12.3 yards per carry); the teams combined to be 14 for 22 on third down conversions.

Memphis beat Houston 48-44 in what was not a great send-off for Tom Herman.  Total offense in this game was 1243 yards; the defenses allowed 31 points combined in the 4th quarter of this close game.

Texas Tech beat Baylor 54-35.  Total offense combined in this game was 1310 yards; the two starting QBs threw for 9 TDs with only 1 INT in the game.

Arizona beat Arizona St 56-35.  Arizona ran the ball for 511 yards on only 46 carries (a mere 11.1 yards per carry).

LSU beat Texas A&M 54-39.  Total combined offense in this game was 1109 yards; the defenses combined to allow 42 points in the fourth quarter of the game.

Considering all of those games, they pale in comparison to the ACC game between Pitt and Syracuse.  Pitt won this monument to defensive ineptitude – or defensive apathy if that makes you feel better – by a score of 76-61.  There were 20 touchdowns scored in this game; that is an average of 1 TD every 3 minutes of playing time.  The total score (137 points) is the most ever scored in a Division 1-A football game; it is more than will be scored in more than a few Division 1-A basketball games this winter.  Pitt only had the ball for 24 minutes and 18 seconds in this game; that means they scored at a rate of 1 point every 19.2 seconds.  The teams saved plenty of fireworks for the end of the game; in the fourth quarter, the teams scored a combined 47 points.

There is a great irony in the Pitt/Syracuse result.  Pitt’s coach, Pat Narduzzi, got the job at Pitt based on his consistent success as a coordinator at Michigan State.  Narduzzi was the defensive coordinator there…

There was one game last week that was a bastion of defensive football.  Ohio beat Akron 9-3 giving Ohio an entry into the MAC Championship game against undefeated W. Michigan.  In the Ohio/Akron game last week, the two teams combined for 563 yards total offense.  [Note that is less yardage than New Mexico rushed for in the New Mexico/Wyoming game.]  Akron was held to 95 yards rushing on 32 attempts.  All the scoring in the game came on field goals.

With Boise St. losing to Air Force last week, that probably eliminates Boise St. from getting the reserved slot in a New Year’s Day bowl game for the “highest ranked conference champion from a non-Power 5 conference”.  Boise St. is now 10-2 and it appears that the competition for that slot comes down to:

  1. Navy: The Middies are 9-2 and will play Temple for the AAC Championship this week and then will play Army next week.  The Middies have scored 60+ points in each of the last 2 weeks and there could be an edge for them that is not reflected by on-the-field play.  Navy is a team with a wide-following and it “travels well”.  The bowl organizers want a “good team” on the field but more importantly, they want a team that will bring lots of fans to the game and to the host city for a day or so before and after the game.  Navy can and will do that…
  2. W. Michigan: The Broncos are 12-0 and will play Ohio in the MAC Championship Game tonight. As of this morning, W. Michigan is ranked 2 notches above Navy.  Rankings are purely subjective and there can certainly be “non-football influences” placed on the anonymous voters.  It will be interesting to see what happens if W. Michigan wins tonight and Navy wins out … By the way, when W. Michigan hired PJ Fleck, his first team went 1-11; that was 3 years ago and now they are 12-0.  According to USA today, PJ Fleck’s “Total Pay” is $820,360.

 

The Ponderosa Games:

 

Last week, there were 8 Ponderosa Games.  The record for favorites covering in those 8 games was 3-5-0.  For the season to date, the record for favorites covering in Ponderosa Games is 45-50-1.

Clemson, Troy and W. Kentucky covered.

Louisville, K-State, Pitt, Stanford and Tulsa did not cover.  Louisville lost straight up as a 26.5-point favorite.

Normally, there are no Ponderosa Games in the final week of the college football regular season because the final week schedule is dominated by Conference Championship Games.  That is not the case this year.

 

Alabama – 24 vs. Florida (41):  The SEC Championship Game between Alabama and Florida is a Ponderosa Game.  I never recall that happening since the origin of the SEC Championship Game.  The spread opened the week at 21.5 points and has climbed to this level steadily.  I do not normally make selections in Ponderosa Games but since this is the SEC Championship Game, I want to make a pick.  The Florida offense is over-matched going against the Alabama defense.  Without forcing a few turnovers or scoring in the return game, I would not be surprised to see Florida struggle to score 6 points.  Meanwhile, the Florida defense is solid; yes, they gave up points to Florida St. last week, but the defense has carried the Gators this far.  I’ll take the game to stay UNDER.

 

Arkansas St. – 24 at Texas St. (54): When Texas St. loses – as it has done 9 times already this season – it tends to lose by wide margins.  That is a major reason why Texas St. is in the SHOE Tournament for 2016 (see below).

 

The SHOE Teams:

 

Here is the final seeding of the 8 worst teams in the country.  Remember, the idea behind the SHOE Tournament is to determine on-the-field which team is the worst team of the year.  The acronym, SHOE, stands for Steaming Heap Of Excrement.  The teams would nominally play each other in standard seeding format but the loser has to play on and to continue to abide its own stench; victors can go home and pretend this season never happened.  After 3 rounds, the loser of the final game would be the SHOE Team for 2016.

 

#1 Seed:  Fresno St.  1-11 and that win was over a Division 1-AA school

#2 Seed:  Texas St.  2-9 with a game to play.  8 losses to date are by 20+ points.

#3 Seed:  UMass 2-10 Since 1 Oct they have lost 7 games and gave up 30+ points each time.

#4 Seed:  Rutgers 2-10  Lost 4 shutouts by a combined score of 224-0.

#5 Seed:  Buffalo  2-10  One of those losses was to a Division 1-AA school (Albany)

#6 Seed:  UConn 3-9  They lost their last 4 games by a combined 136-16.

#7 Seed:  Rice 3-9  None of the wins is even marginally impressive

#8 Seed:  Virginia 2-10 Twas a bleak first season for coach Bronco Mendenhall at UVa.

 

Games of Interest:

 

(Fri Nite) Ohio vs. W. Michigan – 17 (59) [Game is in Detroit]:  The spread opened at 19 points and has been dropping slowly all week long.  This game is for the MAC Championship.  Yes, Ohio held Akron to 3 points last week (see above) and did so because the Ohio defense is a good one at the level of MAC competition.  W. Michigan has dominated MAC opponents this year; only one conference game was as close as 14 points.  I like W. Michigan to win and cover here.

 

(Fri Nite) Colorado vs. Washington – 8.5 (57.5) [Game is in Santa Clara, CA]:  This is for the PAC-12 Championship.  The Total Line opened at 60 points and has been dropping slowly all week.  I think this is going to be a defensive game so I’ll take the game to stay UNDER.

 

Baylor at W. Virginia – 16.5 (68):  Baylor has lost 5 games in a row and W. Virginia is ranked #14 this week in the AP poll.  I think this is a giant mismatch and I do not think Baylor is going to show up and play with any vigor.  Their 6-0 start to the season is a dim memory.  I like W. Virginia to win and cover.

 

Oklahoma St. at Oklahoma – 11 (77):  This will decide the Big 12 Champion for 2016 which means something in terms of what bowl game these teams will play in.  Neither one is going to be in the CFP.  Both teams bring offensive weapons to this game but I don’t think this will be a shoot-out because this is an intense rivalry and because this game determines the conference champion.  I like this game to stay UNDER.

 

Temple at Navy – 2.5 (61):  This is for the AAC Championship.  Navy has scored more than 60 points by itself in each of its last two games but the Temple defense looks to be good enough to prevent that sort of outburst.  The game is in Annapolis and that is a good home field advantage for Navy.  I like Navy to win and cover.  It is worth noting that Temple is 11-1 against the spread this year so I am definitely bucking a trend here…

 

Va Tech vs. Clemson – 10 (58) [Game is in Orlando, FL]:  Clemson is a Top 10 team to be sure and perhaps a CFP participant.  I can’t get past the fact that Va Tech is in this game because other teams in their Division found ways to crash and burn at points during this season – – eyes staring in the direction of Chapel Hill for example.  I’ll take Clemson to win and cover here.

 

Penn State vs Wisconsin – 3 (47) [Game is in Indy]:  The winner here is the Big 10 Champion.  Note that both Ohio St. and Michigan are sitting home watching football on TV this weekend.  This is purely a hunch.  Saquon Barkley – RB, Penn State – is a very under-appreciated player and I think he is probably the best skill-position player on the field.  I think he can be the difference here so I’ll take Penn State plus the points.

 

Finally, just for what it is worth…  I know what the CFP polls say and I have heard the various arguments about who should be in the Top 4 and who should be out.  Here is the way I would rank teams on the basis of who looks to be the strongest teams at this point in the season:

 

#1 Seed:  Alabama

#2 Seed:  Michigan – they outplayed Ohio St. and lost to the zebras

#3 Seed:  USC

#4 Seed:  Clemson or Washington – flip a coin between these two.

 

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

 

 

Mythical Picks – NFL – Weekend Of 12/4/16

Once again, this will be an abbreviated version of Mythical Picks.  Last week broke the “boring mold” that had set in for NFL Mythical Picks over the previous 3 weeks.  Instead of going right around .500 for the week, last week was a comfortable – and comforting – 11-5-0.  That makes the season record stand at 102-60-4.

The Best Picks from last week were:

  • Chargers +2 against Texans.  Chargers won outright by 8 points
  • Seahawks/Bucs UNDER 45.  Total score was 19 points.

The Worst Picks from last week were:

  • Jags/Bills UNDER 45.5.  Total score was 49
  • Cowboys -7 against Skins.  Cowboys won by only 5 points.

The coin – acting in accordance with the Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol of course – was assigned 3 games last week.  The coin went 2-1-0 for the week bringing the coin’s record for the year to 13-9-2.

Despite the gaudy results from last week and the overall mythical profitability for the season, no one should use any information here as the basis for making a real wager involving real money on an actual NFL game this weekend.  If you would be dumb enough to do that, you would also be dumb enough to believe that …

… a fibula is a little white lie.

 

General Comments:

 

The Packers beat the Eagles 27-13 on MNF putting both teams’ records at 5-6 for the season.  I suspect that is where the comparison ends.  In the NFC East, the Eagles are in last place five full games behind the division-leading Cowboys.  In the NFC North, the Packers are in 3rd place but are only 2 games behind the division-leading Lions with 5 games to play.  Historically, the Lions are not a team that inspires lots of trust so the status of the Packers is this:

  • They could be in a lot better position than they are; they will almost assuredly need to win the NFC North to make the playoffs.  Nevertheless, history over the past 25 years or so is on the side of the Packers.

We shall see …

The Falcons doubled up on the Cards 38-19.  Running back, David Johnson, was the Cards’ leading rusher (13 carries for 58 yards) and their leading receiver (8 catches for 103 yards).  As a matter of fact, Johnson was the only Cardinal to gain any yardage rushing for the entire game.  The Cards’ success in the past couple of years has relied heavily on getting the ball down the field.  It seems this year as if they no longer feel confident in doing that – perhaps because their OL has been marginal at best in pass protection and their QB, Carson Palmer, is anything but elusive back there.  When they do call a vertical play that takes time to develop, it often ends up with a sack at worst or with Palmer prostrate on the ground at best.  The Cards are 4-6-1 for the season; they are mathematically alive for the playoffs but their hopes are hanging on a gossamer thread.

The Falcons held their lead on the NFC South division teams despite the Bucs and the Saints both winning last week.  They ran for 116 yards (on 30 carries) and threw for 269 yards and 2 TDs in this game.  After this week’s game at ho0me against the Chiefs, the Falcons finish the season with 4 games against teams that are below .500 as of this morning.

The Dolphins won their 6th game in a row last week beating the Niners 31-24.  I anticipated Dolphins’ RB, Jay Ajayi having a huge game against a Niner’s defense that has had more than a bit of trouble stopping the run so far this year.  Well, the Niners managed to stifle Ajay; he only had 45 yards on 18 carries.  However, Ryan Tannehill came up big throwing for 285 yards and 3 TDs in the game.

Colin Kaepernick had a big day.  His timing with regard to his political activism last week was well off target:

  • He wore a t-shirt during the week that seemed to equate Malcom X and Fidel Castro.
  • Last week’s game was in Miami where Castro is not exactly a hero to a large segment of the population.
  • Oh, and Fidel Castro died about 48 hours before kickoff…

On the field, Kaepernick looked like a QB who might just fit into the Chip Kelly system.  He was the Niners’ leading rusher with 113 yards on 10 carries and he threw for 296 yards and 3 TDs and 1 INT.  If that sort of play is a harbinger of things to come, perhaps the Niners can win another game or two this year.  If that was just a statistical anomaly, the Niners seem doomed to pick second behind the hapless Browns next April.

The Saints beat the Rams 49-21 in a game that confounds logic.  I got the game right in Mythical Picks for all the wrong reasons.  Never did I see a way for the Saints to score 49 points on the Rams nor did I see a way for the Saints defense to hold the Rams to well under 300 yards for the game.  Jared Goff threw 3 TDs in the game; given the proclivities of many sports radio hosts, that means they will be wondering why it took the Rams so long to start Goff in real games – – despite the fact that about a month ago, they were declaring Goff a bust and a horrible pick overall at #1 in the draft.  This is why one should not evaluate the worth of draft picks for a couple of years – – even if as rookies they play like Dak Prescott and/or Ezekiel Elliott.  Remember, RG3 was the Offensive Rookie of the Year; how did that work out?

The Giants beat the Browns 27-13 and the “hero” of this game was Jason Pierre-Paul.  His defensive line play – even discounted to some degree because it was against a sub-standard offensive line – indicates that he has adjusted his play to accommodate his hand injury suffered about 15 months ago.  Oh, and just so you do not forget, the Browns are now 0-12 for the year and they stink!

The Chargers beat the Texans 21-13; Philip Rivers 3 TD passes accounted for the Chargers’ scoring.  Meanwhile, the Texans have to be suffering more than a little bit of buyer’s remorse from the free agency period of last Spring.  Their splurge signing was Brock Osweiler for an annualized $18M per year.  Last week, Osweiler threw for a mediocre 246 yards but he had 0 TDs and 3 INTs.  Here is the bottom line:

  • The Texans could have gotten that sort of performance from a career backup QB for 20% of that price.
  • For the year, Osweiler’s stats are not much better.  He is completing 59.8% of his throws; he has 12 TDs and 13 INTs (most INTs in the league as of this morning); he has averaged 209.7 yards per game.
  • There are still 3 years left on his 4-year $72M deal …

The Ravens beat the Bengals 19-14.  The Bengals are done; with injuries to AJ Green and Giovanni Bernard on offense, there is no zip left to the offense.  It may appear as if the Bengals scored 2 TDs to arrive at their 14-point total.  Not the case; they scored 3 FGs, a safety on the final play of the game and 1 TD with a missed PAT.  That was the 3rd PAT in a row missed by Mike Nugent over a 2-game stretch.  Let’s just say that does not happen all that often even with the added distance on PATs in the past couple of years.

The Bills beat the Jags 28-21.  The Bills continue to aspire to the playoffs and it could happen.  However, it is going to take a lot of things to break just perfectly for them to get in.  The “story” of this game is that the Jags’ leading rusher was QB, Blake Bortles; he carried 8 times for 81 yards.  He was also – obviously – the Jags’ leading passer but his stats there were hardly gaudy:

  • 13 for 26 for 126 yards with 2 TDs and 0 INTs.

The Titans held on to beat the Bears 27-21.  The Bears had 4 shots at the end zone in the final seconds of the game and did not get the TD that would have at least tied the game and sent it to OT.  The Titans’ record is 6-6 but that puts them in the middle of the AFC South race where the Texans are 6-5 and the Colts are 5-6.  The Titans have their BYE Week this week and are hoping for losses by both the Texans and the Colts.  The Bears are 2-9 and look pretty much like a team with that sort of record.

Speaking of the Colts, they lost to the Steelers last week 28-7.  It was the Thanksgiving night game and the Colts appeared to be suffering from too much turkey tryptophan.  Scott Tolzien played QB for the Colts because Andrew Luck was still in the NFL’s concussion protocol.  The Colts’ OL did not provide Tolzien with much comfort; he was hit and harassed all night long.  Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown hooked up for 3 TD passes to provide the margin of victory.

The Bucs beat the Seahawks 14-5 last week and did it by harassing Russell Wilson from start to finish.  Like Blake Bortles and Colin Kaepernick, Wilson was the Seahawks leading rusher gaining 80 yards on 8 carries.  Like Bortles, his passing stats were awful:

  • 17-33 for 151 yards with 0 TDs and 2 INTs.

The Bucs are in second place in the NFC South only 1 game behind the Falcons.  The Bucs and Falcons split their season series this year and both teams have only 1 loss in the division.  This could be an interesting race to watch…

The Raiders beat the Panthers 35-32.  The Panthers record now stands at 4-7 which is even worse than the Cards’ 4-6-1 record the season after those two teams squared off in the NFC Championship Game.  The Raiders have won 5 games in a row; they are tied with the Pats for the best record in the AFC; they are undefeated on the road so far this year (5-0) and only the Titans in the AFC have scored more points for the season.  The Raiders have two very good teams chasing them in the AFC West, but so far the Raiders have passed every test.

The Pats beat the Jets 22-17 last week.  The Jets did not send Bryce Petty out to play QB against the Pats for his second NFL start; Ryan Fitzpatrick played QB once again.  The Jets played hard and the game was as even on the stat sheet as it was on the scoreboard.  The difference was that the Jets led in the second half 17-13 and then Tom Brady worked his “comeback magic” which he has done a time or two.  This was Brady’s 200th career win as a starting QB.

The Chiefs beat the Broncos 30-27 in OT; despite the 57 points, this was a defensive game.  Sometime in the middle of the 4th quarter, Cris Colnisworth said he wished the game could go to OT and he said he was trying to imagine the scenarios that would get it there because it was that good a game.  Well, he got his wish and then he got an ending that saw the winning field goal hit the left upright and carom just a foot or so behind the left upright.  If you get a chance to see the game on NFL Network as a replay and did not see it on Sunday Night Football, sit down with some pretzels and beer or some cheese and a glass of red wine and enjoy it…

The Lions beat the Vikes 16-13.  The Lions are 7-4 and lead the NFC North by a game over the Vikes and 2 games over the Packers.  The Lions have trailed in the 4th quarter of all 11 games this year and have come back to win 7 of them.  Can they keep that up or might they “regress to the mean”?  It almost does not pay to watch any of the Lions’ games until the start of the 4th quarter.

The Cowboys beat the Skins 31-26 despite Kirk Cousins throwing for 446 yards and 3 TDs in the game.  At 6-4-1, the Skins hold the second NFC wild card slot as of today.  Obviously, if the Skins win out, they have to be in the playoffs and all 5 of their remaining games are “winnable”:

  1. At Arizona this week
  2. At Philly
  3. Vs. Carolina
  4. At Chicago
  5. Vs Giants at home on New Year’s Day

 

The Games:

 

Two teams have their BYE Week this week – – and that will end the BYE Weeks for the rest of the regular season.  Four teams will enjoy a week off for the first round of the playoffs in January but we should not get ahead of ourselves here.

  1. The Browns have a week off to try to conjure up a spell that will get them a win.
  2. The Titans have a week off hoping for the Texans and Colts to lose.

 

(Thurs Nite) Dallas – 3 at Minnesota (44):  Holy Cow!  A Thursday night game featuring 2 good teams both of whom are in the thick of things regarding the playoff chase…  I am not sure I am ready for that sort of a shock.  You could convince me that this deserves to be the Game of the Week and I had it on the short list until I bestowed that title elsewhere.  I think the Vikes’ defense will play well here and I think the Cowboys’ defense will be able to stifle the less-than-potent Vikes’ offense.  I see a close game start to finish and I’ll take the game to stay UNDER.

 

Denver – 4 at Jax (40):  The Total Line here opened at 43 and sagged to this level rather quickly.  The Broncos went to OT last Sunday in a night game; they have to fly 2 time zones to get to Jax and they are not bringing a great offense with them.  Normally, I would not lay points with a team in that situation.  However, these are the Jags whose 1-4 home record is hardly fearsome and whose offense should have real trouble moving the ball against the Broncos’ defense.  I like the Broncos to win and cover here – even with the “short week” and far from home.

 

KC at Atlanta – 4 (49):  This is my Game of the Week – not because both of these teams are better than the teams in the other games under consideration – but because this game means a ton to both teams.  The loser here is likely to be hurting a lot come Monday morning…  The Chiefs also went to OT on Sunday night and they too are on the road this week.  They are facing a much better opponent in the Falcons than the Broncos are facing.  The Falcons are the highest scoring team in the NFL but the Chiefs’ defense has given up less than 20 points per game so far this year.  The Chiefs may not light it up on offense, but I still am wary of putting too much trust in the Falcons’ defense.  Purely a hunch, I like the Chiefs plus the points here.

 

Houston at Green Bay – 6.5 (45.5):  Short and sweet here…  I like Aaron Rodgers being able to find ways to score here better than I do Brock Osweiler being able to find ways to score here.  I’ll take Green Bay at home and lay the points.

 

Philly at Cincy “pick’em” (42):  Neither team is going to the playoffs but neither team is disastrously bad.  The Bengals’ offensive woes center around injuries to Giovanni Bernard and AJ Green (see above).  The Eagles’ offensive woes center around a lack of quality wide receivers to catch passes from Carson Wentz.  I’ll make this nothing more than a venue call; I’ll take the Bengals at home to win the game.

 

Detroit at New Orleans – 6 (54):  The spread here opened at 3.5 points and jumped to this level very quickly.  No, I do not know why.  Here is what I do know; in 11 games this year for the Lions, only 3 of them were decided one way of the other by 7 points.  All the rest were closer than that.  The Lions are 2-3 on the road, but this is at least a dome game for them.  Given how well they have played so far this year, I am surprised to be able to get 6 points in a game against a sub-.500 team.  I’ll take the Lions plus the points.

 

SF at Chicago – 1 (43.5):  There was not even a ripple of discontent in the audience when I selected this as the Dog-Breath Game of the Week.  There was, however, a suggestion that I come up with another name that would smell worse than the worst dog-breath ever experienced by mankind since the domestication of the species.  I took that under advisement but left the name as it was…  As I alluded to above, last week may have been a spark of understanding for Colin Kaepernick in the Chip Kelly offense.  I will assume here that to be the case and take the Niners plus the point even on the road.  Remember, these are mythical picks…

 

LA at New England – 14 (44):  How do I hate double-digit spreads in NFL games?  Let me count the ways … (Hat tip to Elizabeth Barrett Browning) I have to believe that the Rams’ coaching staff has given the Rams’ defensive unit a swift kick in the posterior after giving up 49 points last week.  This like looks awfully fat to me so I’ll take the Rams plus 2 TD’s worth of points.

 

Miami at Baltimore – 3 (40.5): This game means a lot to both of these teams vis a vis the playoffs but neither team has the pizazz of other teams in similar games this week.  Hence, this is not the Game of the Week.  This is going to be a low-scoring game that will go down to the final possession. I am turning this game over to the Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol and the coin says to take the Dolphins plus the points.

 

Buffalo at Oakland – 3 (48):  The Total Line opened at 50 and has been edging slowly down all week.  I think the Bills can score on the Raiders’ defense and I think the Raiders can score on the Bills’ defense.  I like this game to go OVER.

 

Tampa at San Diego – 3.5 (47.5):  If Tampa harbors any hopes of making the playoffs, it needs to win here – and win a bunch of games down the stretch.  The Chargers won’t say it publicly, but they know they are not going to the playoffs.  I know that this is a long trip for a young Bucs’ team and that Philip Rivers has not given up the ghost just yet.  Nonetheless, I am impressed by the way the Bucs beat the Seahawks and manhandled them last week.  I’ll take the Bucs plus the points even on the road.

 

Washington at Arizona – 3 (49):  Short and sweet here … The wrong team is favored; the Skins are going to win the game outright.  I’ll take the Skins plus the points.

 

Giants at Pittsburgh – 6 (49):  This game means a lot to both teams in the midst of playoff runs but I think the Chiefs/Falcons game is a better one.  There are lots of countervailing trends and stats here so I’ll just turn this over to the Coin Flip Protocol.  The coin says to take the game to stay UNDER.  Why not, the coin has been right 59% of the time up to this week…

 

(Sun Nite) Carolina at Seattle – 7 (44):  When the NFL put this game on the Sunday Night menu back in May, I promise you that the suits thought this might be the Game of the Year.  Well, it sure is not that.  Seattle is up and down this year – – and they were indeed down last week.  Carolina has been mediocre and down all year long.  I think Seattle will return to “good” and that should beat “mediocre”.  I’ll take the Seahawks and lay the points.

 

(Mon Nite) Indy at Jets “pick ‘em (48):  The oddsmaker wants me to pick the winner.  Ok, I’ll take the Jets at home because I think the Jets will be the better team at controlling the line of scrimmage.

 

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

 

 

Bruce Arena Replaces Jurgen Klinsmann …

The US Men’s National soccer team (USMNT) has had two bad losses in international qualifying play in the past several weeks.  Naturally, the response to those losses (to Mexico and then to Costa Rica) was to fire the coach, Jurgen Klinsmann.  The soccer-adorers in the US would have their emotions somewhere between orgasmic and rapturous in the event that the US were to win something big like the World Cup or the Olympic Gold Medal in soccer.  Precisely because they can imagine such euphoria, they simultaneously imagine that such achievements are not just possible but are likely if only they could get the right guy to “coach ‘em up” properly.

The soccer-adorers are living in a delusional state; but when one is in such a state, reality and fantasy blur at the edges.  Moreover, they so fondly want the fantasy state to become the reality state that their mood is improved when the coach gets fired and a new victim/coach is put in charge.  Hope springs eternal … and all that stuff.

The new coach will be Bruce Arena.  He had the job once before and not surprisingly, he did not take the USMNT to the sorts of heights that the soccer-adorers envision for their national team heroes.  There was a time when the soccer-adorers were only happy to see Bruce Arena replaced at the helm for not getting the job done; today he is the maven that will kick down the barricades keeping the USMNT from its glory.

Let me be clear; I am not someone who roots against the USMNT.  I also admit that there are tons of people out there who recognize the subtleties of play in soccer games that totally escape my notice.  Having said all of that, here is something that is very clear to me when I watch international soccer games:

  • There is an obvious difference in the way the players on other teams play the game of soccer as compared to the way the players on the USMNT play the game of soccer.  The difference is qualitative and not quantitative; nonetheless, it is real and it is not hard to see – – unless one prefers not to see it from the get-go.

That qualitative difference is why the USMNT is on a different plane of existence in the world of international soccer from the plane occupied by teams from Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and the rest of the usual suspects when it comes to top international competition.  I have a hypothesis – it is not even sufficiently established to call it a theory – as to why this is the case.

The US has 320 million residents; that is a large pool of potential soccer players from which to distill 20 or 25 guys who will represent the country in international competition.  By comparison, here are the rough populations of some countries that are far more accomplished in international soccer than the US:

  1. Argentina has a population of about 42 million
  2. Brazil has a population of about 200 million
  3. England has a population of about 53 million
  4. Germany has a population of about 60 million
  5. Italy has a population of about 60 million

Costa Rica – the team that just beat the USMNT by a score of 4-0 – has a population of less than 5 million people.  So why would it appear that the US is mining such “low-grade ore” when it comes to finding about 25 guys to play consistently at the top levels of international competition?  I reject the argument that there are not enough natural athletes in the population here in the US or that all the really good athletes go into baseball or football or basketball because that is where the money is.  There are plenty of minor sports where American athletes consistently competitive and soccer is on a higher potential income level than many of those other minor sports.  [Aside:  As soon as I write this, I am certain that someone will form a National Luge League and start offering six figure contracts to lugers everywhere…]

My hypothesis is that the youth sports culture in the US is the problem.  I have read in several places that “Soccer Academies” are commonplace in much of the rest of the world.  These “Soccer Academies” take children – some as young as 6 years old – and begin to give them the skills necessary to be a top-shelf player.  The key word in that last sentence is “skills”.  These academies stress fundamentals and techniques and learning the game through drills and repetition and practice.  Here in the US, we take kids and have them practice and then put them into “game situations”.  If the “most promising” players here were taught skills more than given the opportunity to play games and spend hours en route to games for travel teams, I think the USMNT would be in a better place 10 years down the road.

One of those “qualitative differences” that I see when watching the USMNT play against an English or Spanish team is this:

  • The foreign players seem to know what they are going to do with the ball as it is approaching them while the US players seem to be trying to control the ball first and then figure out what their next move shall be.

I think that particular “qualitative difference” can be explained by the constant repetition of skills exercises that foreign players undergo in their development; they do not need to do things sequentially and in finite quanta of play; they seem to know what to do – and how they are going to do it  – before they are in a position to do it.  Moreover, their teammates appear to be able to see what is happening and to recognize what the player about to receive the ball is going to do next even before he is in possession of the ball.

If I am even close to correct, the thing that is keeping the US from the pinnacle of international soccer competition is not the coach and it is not really the players themselves.  I think a large part of the “problem” is that we develop our young players in a less effective manner than the rest of the world does.  Players who grew up developing skills and anticipation will distill down to a better national team than players who grew up playing games whenever possible and letting the outcome of those games depend on superior natural athleticism.  In the US, our youth player system favors the offspring of young affluent parents; there are loads of kids who could not possibly afford to be part of a “travel team” and in the US, if you are not on that track, you are not likely to be recognized as a “high potential player” on school teams.  We have limited our pool of talent and we do not teach skills the way they do internationally.

Jurgen Klinsmann lost games because – and this is only a bit of an exaggeration – he took a knife to a gun fight.  That happened to Bruce Arena in the past prior to his firing as the coach of the USMNT and it is going to happen to him again sometime in the next 3-5 years.  Unless of course, Bruce Arena finds a lamp on a beach somewhere and rubs it and a genie appears and …

Finally, there was an “incident” involving a player on the South African National Soccer Team that drew commentary from two sportswriters:

“A player was kicked off South Africa’s national soccer team for passing gas in the direction of the coach.  You can’t help but feel the team chemistry may be slightly off.”  [Brad Dickson, Omaha World-Herald]

And …

“SowetanLive.co.za reported that striker Tokelo Rantie got booted from South Africa’s national soccer team for passing gas in the direction of manager Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba.

“Somewhere, the late Margaret Mitchell is smiling.”  [Dwight Perry, Seattle Times]

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

 

 

Coaches On A Hot Seat – Update

Back before the NFL season began, I did my annual exercise in embarrassing myself by predicting every team’s record for the 2016 season before the kickoff for the first game.  Part of that exposition is always my list of “Coaches on the Hot Seat” and with the NFL season now 75% finished, I thought I would go back to see at how those predictions look.  I had 8 coaches on the hot seat and here is what I said then and what I think now.

In early September, this is what I said:

“Gus Bradley (Jags): I had him on this list last year but the Jags showed definite improvement in 2015. I think that the Jags are a team on the rise and that Bradley will in fact be back next year. However, if I am dead wrong on that and the Jags regress to something like a 3-13 record, he will be toast. So, I put him on the list for the sake of completeness.”

Today, I say the Jags have regressed significantly and Bradley is going to be toast in early January 2017.

In early September, this is what I said:

“Jim Caldwell (Lions): Last year, the team rallied to win 6 games in the second half of the season to finish 7-9. If you do the math there, that means the Lions were 1-7 in the first half of the season. Presumably, the Front Office saw the second half surge as a harbinger of good things for 2016. If that is the case and if the Lions do not build on that surge, I suspect that Jim Caldwell will be moving on at the end of the 2016 season.”

Today, I say that the Lions look as if they will make the playoffs and Jim Caldwell will not be moving on.

In early September, this is what I said:

“Jeff Fisher (Rams): The Rams underachieved last year and I thought that the Rams had not been “playoff relevant” for a while now, so I went and looked up Fisher’s record there. It is not pretty:

  • He has been with the Rams for 4 seasons. The combined record is 27-36-1 and there have been no playoff appearances for the Rams.
  • Moreover, his last winning season (with the Titans) was all the way back in 2008.

Fisher signed a 5-year contract in 2012; this is his “contract year”. The Rams now play in LA where teams that contend for titles draw plenty of attention and adulation and where bad/mediocre teams fade into obscurity very quickly. Fisher and the Rams had better win this year.”

Today, I say that despite rumors of a 3-year extension of Fisher’s contract about 2 months ago, the Rams have been disappointing at best this year and a good way to take the LA fans’ minds off that disappointment would be to hire a new coach.  I think he will be fired after the Rams finish out of the playoffs.

In early September, this is what I said:

“Jason Garrett (Cowboys): In no way, would he be responsible for a bad year by the Cowboys. In fact, you might argue that he enters the season in the situation where he has brought a knife to a gunfight. But expectations were really high for the Cowboys this year; Jerry Jones has been hyping the 2016 season ever since the 2015 season ended. So, if the Cowboys really tank this year, Jerry Jones may need to do something symbolic to show his fanbase that he is doing more about “winning” than talking about “winning”. So, put Garrett on a hot seat even if he does not deserve to be there.”

Today, I say that the Cowboys have certainly not tanked and Garrett is not on anything resembling a hot seat now.

In early September, this is what I said:

“Marvin Lewis (Bengals): I believe that Lewis is the coach – not named Belichick – with the longest tenure with his team in all of the NFL. Granted, he took over a dysfunctional team in a dysfunctional franchise and got everything headed in a positive direction. The Bengals owe him a lot for that.

  • Some perspective here. Lewis has had the Bengals in the playoffs 7 times in 13 seasons. Prior to his arrival in Cincy, the Bengals had been in the playoffs a total of 7 times in 37 seasons.
  • Before Lewis arrived, the team was not-so-affectionately known as “The Bungles” and they earned every morsel of that moniker.

Here is the problem; the Bengals have not won a playoff game in the 13 years that Marvin Lewis has been the coach there. The team is 0-7 in playoff games and have lost in the opening round in each of the last 5 seasons. Last year’s loss was due to a total loss of focus/control/discipline on the part of two defensive players. That sort of “loss” falls under the heading of “coaching”. I think Marvin Lewis needs a playoff win this year…”

Today, I say that the Bengals are not going to win a playoff game because they are not going to come close to making the playoffs.

In early September, this is what I said:

“Mike McCoy (Chargers): This is his 4th season in San Diego. In his first year, the team went 9-7 and made the playoffs (and won a playoff game too). In his second year, the team went 9-7 again but missed out on the playoffs. Last year – under a blizzard of injuries – the Chargers were 4-12. McCoy is on a hot seat if the team goes 4-12 again. He does not have to win his division – I do not think the Chargers can do that – but they have to be better than getting the overall #3 pick in the draft once again.”

Today, I say that the Chargers have indeed done better than last year but it looks as if the Chargers will be no better than 8-8 this year.  McCoy’s seat is hot but ownership in San Diego has to deal with bigger questions right now than coaching changes – – such as where might the Chargers call home in the future.

In early September, I this is what I said:

“Mike Mularkey (Titans): He took over in mid-season last year and went 2-7 in his 9 games then. Management gave him a shot to move things forward this year but his coaching record is not one that inspires a lot of confidence. He has been a head coach for 3.5 seasons. Back in 2004 (with the Bills) he had a 9-7 record. Since then, his cumulative record is 9-32. Add to that negativity the fact that the Titans’ roster is “talent-challenged”. I think this hot seat will be ”Habanero Hot” come January 2017.”

Today, I say that the Titans are challenging for first place in the AFC South and could well finish the season at 8-8.  That is not a great record but it is a huge step forward for a franchise that has exactly one winning season since 2009.  Mike Mularkey is sitting pretty about now…

In early September, this is what I said:

“Rex Ryan (Bills): Like Jason Garrett above, he may be looking at a season where a sterling record is highly improbable. Nonetheless, given the braggadocio and the setting of ultra-high expectations that is the hallmark of any Rex Ryan press conference, he might be out of a job come January if the team falls below .500. For the record, Ryan has an overall losing record as a head coach (54-58-0) and his last winning season was back in 2010.”

Today, I say that the Bills are still alive in the wild-card race in the AFC but they are indeed longshots there.  Looking at the schedule, finishing the season at 9-7 is an optimistic outlook from here to the end of the season.  I think Ryan’s seat is hot – but not en feugo – and that most of the heat comes from his continuing projection of his team as the best in the league, which they are not.

Teams doing badly this year who may have put their coaches in jeopardy include:

 

NY Jets:  Todd Bowles is not the reason the team is 3-8 but the fact is that the team is 3-8 and in NYC that is about as much fun as a splinter under your thumbnail.

Cleveland Browns:  Yes, they are 0-12 but with that roster, they would have needed incredible luck just to be 2-10.  In addition, owner Jimmy Haslem has hired and fired so many coaches and GMs in the past few years that he might not be able to get any top-shelf candidates even to take his phone calls come January.  Hue Jackson’s job is – and ought to be – safe.

Indy Colts:  Yes, Chuck Pagano got a contract extension last year.  However, someone should be responsible for that roster and the year-after-year demonstration of the same roster flaws.  Maybe he stays and the GM goes?  Maybe not…

Green Bay Packers:  If the Packers finish 6-10 …

Chicago Bears:  John Fox has shown that he can coach in the NFL but trying to win games with Matt Barkley at QB goes beyond the realm of “coaching  ‘em up”.   Probably, the best the team can achieve this year is 5-11 – and more likely 3-13 – so a coaching change in Chicago is certainly not out of the question.

Arizona Cardinals:  The Cards are 4-6-1 as of this morning and many folks thought they could be Super Bowl participants in February 2017.  If they finish 6-9-1, will the owners see this as a coaching failure or will they recognize that the team needs a roster overhaul – including an upgrade at QB?  Remember, the Bidwell’s own the Cardinals…

 

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times regarding coaching in another sport in another country:

“Former Czech Republic hockey coach Vladimir Ruzicka, accused of taking $20,750 from a player’s father who said he paid to let his son play, has been convicted of fraud.

“In other words, this Czech didn’t clear.”

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

 

 

A Mish-Mash Monday …

A few days ago, I noted that the LA Rams had won two games this year without scoring a TD in either game.  I suggested that this sort of thing may have happened for frequently “in the 30s and 40s” but that I could not recall it happening recently.  Even though I should have, I did not expect an e-mail response from the reader in Houston who is the repository for sports history and stats.  Here is what he provided;

“In the 1920’s, there were 77 games in which a team won without scoring a TD. There were also a load of 0-0 and 3-3 ties and some 6-6 games that no TD was scored during that period. Please note that in the 20s, the average number of games per year was less than 80.

“In the 1930’s, there were 37 such games won without scoring a TD and there were still ties, but not as many as the previous decades. Please note that in the 30s, the average number of games per year was less than 55.

“In the 1940’s, there were only 4 such games and that includes both the NFL and the four years of the AAFC.

“More recently, there were no NFL games from 2013 to 2015 in which the winning team scored fewer than 10 points, but there have been two this season: the two mentioned above. LA is the first team since the 1997 Bills to win two games in one season in which it scored fewer than 10 points. Buffalo did that in Marv Levy’s final season as its head coach, with victories against Indy and Miami, each by a 9-6 score on all field goals.”

A tip of the hat in the compass direction aimed at Houston, TX for that information…

There was a minor tempest in a teacup a few weeks ago when Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, pulled the press credentials from two ESPN reporters because ESPN made a decision he did not like.  Evidently, ESPN decided that one of the two reporters would not cover the Mavs exclusively this year but would also cover the NBA “in general”.  Cuban took exception and refused to give the reporters press credentials which kept them away from the team and the locker rooms.

Since Cuban owns the team, he has every right to hand out press credentials however he sees fit.  Some people immediately screamed that this was a “First Amendment issue” which it most certainly is not.  Later as it became advantageous for both Cuban and ESPN to modify their positions without appearing to give in to the other side, the basis for Cuban’s actions somehow became associated with “robot reporting” of sports stories as a new trend in that field.  Both sides here could agree that “robo-reporting” was “bad”; ESPN could wave the banner of “quality in journalism” while Cuban could stake out a position as a “defender of jobs for journalists”.  In any event, everyone kissed and made up…

However, when I look at the NBA standings this morning, I note that the Dallas Mavericks’ record is 3-13 and that record is the worst in the NBA at the moment.  Indeed, the Mavs are trailing both the Sixers and the Nets in the standings – albeit not by much – as of this morning.  Perhaps, the Mavericks would be treated more kindly by a “robo-reporter” than a “quality journalist” given the product on the floor.  Just a thought…

Last week, the NCAA announced that Notre Dame would have to vacate its football victories from 2012 and 2013 because a student-trainer did academic work for some of the players on those teams which is a violation of NCAA rules and thereby made those players ineligible.  Ergo …

That sounds pretty cut and dried but when you look just a bit closer, you begin to see frayed edges on the fabric of this decision.  Consider:

  1. Notre Dame discovered this on its own and suspended multiple players for academic violations on its own. The NCAA super-sleuths and the NCAA Committee on Infractions had no idea this was going on until Notre Dame informed them of the problem.
  2. The “punishment” is feckless to the Nth degree. In 2012, Notre Dame played Alabama in the BCS Championship Game.  Vacating all the wins prior to that game does not take them out of that game and put a different team in there to play Alabama.  Is anyone to believe that the 12 teams that lost to Notre Dame prior to the BCS Championship game actually won those games?
  3. More on the feckless punishment … From this point forward, Notre Dame will suffer exactly nothing for something that the Committee on Infractions thought was sufficiently heinous that it had to issue a punishment 4 years after the fact.  There is no loss of scholarships – nor should there be; there is no ban from post-season play – nor should there be.  The football program will proceed apace from here on save for the silliness of “vacated wins” in the past.
  4. Hold on, here comes “the hammer” from the NCAA mavens … In addition to vacating those wins, Notre Dame must pay a fine of $5K and the school had to take the public reprimand from the NCAA.  To which I say:

Whoop-di-damned-doo!!

Finally, in the aftermath of Thanksgiving week, here is a comment from Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald regarding something we may not have realized we should be thankful for:

“Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks that none of the three NFL games featured the Cleveland Browns.”

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

 

Mythical Picks – NCAA – Weekend Of 11/26/16

 

Last week’s NCAA Mythical Picks were pretty boring – continuing a trend of monotony for the last 3 weeks.  Last week the record was 6-6-0 – hardly very exciting.  Over the past 3 weeks, the record has been 20-20-0 – hardly very exciting.  For the entire season, the cumulative record is just a tad less boring standing at 97-85-0.

The Best Picks from last week were:

  • Iowa St. +3 against Texas Tech.  Iowa St won the game 66-10.
  • Michigan St. +22 against Ohio St.  Ohio St. won by 1 point.

The Worst Picks from last week were:

  • Utah – 14 against Oregon.  Utah lost the game straight up.
  • Oklahoma St/TCU OVER 70.5.  Total Score was 37.

Despite the ennui that has set in over the past 3 weeks regarding these picks, I shall soldier on.  Let me take a moment, however, to remind anyone and everyone reading these picks that one would have to be extremely stupid to use any information here as the basis for making a real wager on a real college football game involving real money.  How stupid?

You might name your cell phone Titanic because it is always syncing.

 

General Comments:

 

The Linfield College Wildcats won their first-round game in the Division III national playoffs beating Hardin-Simmons 24-10 in Abilene, TX.  That makes the Linfield record for the season 9-1 and this week they get to avenge that single loss.  This week, the Wildcats go back to Texas – this time to Belton, TX – to take on Mary Hardin-Baylor.  When those teams met back on September 17th in that same stadium, Mary Hardin-Baylor prevailed comfortably by a score of 66-27.  Here is a perspective on that score:

  • Mary Hardin-Baylor scored 66 points in 60 minutes (1.1 points per minute).
  • In the other 9 games (540 minutes), Linfield allowed a total of 109 points (0.2 points per minute).

Go Wildcats!

The Eagles of Eastern Washington concluded their regular season at 10-1 with a win over Portland St. last weekend.  The Eagles have a BYE into the second round of the Division 1-AA playoffs as the second seed in the 24-team tournament.  Next week they will meet the winner of the Central Arkansas/Illinois St. game this week.

Eagles’ WR, Cooper Kupp had a mundane game as compared to some of his other performances.  He caught 6 passes for 67 Yards.  That’s it; no more and no less…  Go Eagles!

Western Michigan extended its record to 11-0 last week with a 38-0 beatdown of the Buffalo Bulls.  I am not trying to suggest that W. Michigan belongs in the CFP because I think they do not based on the strength of their schedule.  However, I doubt that any team in the middle echelon of one of the “power five” conferences would want to play them this week or next week for a winner-takes-all purse from the game…

The PAC-12 probably had the most interesting action last week.  Colorado beat Washington St putting Colorado in control in the PAC-12 South race.  The Buffaloes have only 1 conference loss; if they win this week against Utah, they will be the PAC-12 South representative in the PAC-12 championship game because USC has 2 conference losses.  Colorado is 9-2 for the year and its two losses are respectable:

  • They lost to Michigan in Ann Arbor but led in the game.
  • They lost to USC once the Trojans got themselves in a groove.

Most of the attention in the PAC-12 this year has been focused on Washington and USC; I think Colorado’s season has been underappreciated – particularly considering their 9 wins this year compared to their 10 wins in the past three seasons combined.  The CFP Selection Committee will not consider this stat, but there are lots of Colorado boosters and lots of football fans of the “Las Vegas variety” who are impressed by the fact that:

  • Colorado is 10-1 against the spread this year.

Arizona lost to Oregon St. last week 42-17 in a game that had no meaning whatsoever in terms of the PAC-12.  However, those fans of the “Las Vegas variety” took note of the score because Arizona is the mirror-image of Colorado in two ways:

  1. Arizona is at the bottom of the PAC-12 standings not at the top
  2. Arizona is 1-10 against the spread this year.

Utah lost in the final couple of seconds last week to Oregon is a huge upset.  The Utes were 14-point favorites and I took them in last week’s Mythical Picks thinking they would run a way and hide from Oregon.  That loss eliminates Utah from the possibility of playing for the PAC-12 championship and opens the door for USC – should Colorado lose this week.

USC handled UCLA 36-14.  The story of this game is contained in these two stats:

  1. USC total offense = 537 yards
  2. UCLA total offense = 266 yards

Down in SEC country, Florida beat LSU to win the SEC East and give itself a date to play Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.  Florida won by 6 points and had to put up a goal line stand in the final seconds to preserve the win.  LSU had 2 tries from the 1 yardline and could not get in at the end of the game.  LSU dominated the stat sheet:

  • LSU total offense = 423 yards
  • Florida total offense = 270 yards

However, LSU was inefficient in the Red Zone.  Twice they had the ball inside the Florida 10 yardline and came away totally dry; on a third visit, LSU had the ball first and goal at the 3 yardline and had to settle for a field goal.  Given the final score was 16-10, that Red Zone inefficiency lost the game for the Tigers in Baton Rouge.

In the Big 10, Ohio St. escaped an upset by Michigan St. by a score of 17-16.  Michigan St. tried and failed to convert a 2-point try with less than 5 minutes left in the game.  That would have provided the margin of victory for the Spartans but Ohio St. held.

Penn St. kept itself on track to be the Big 10 East representative in the Big 10 Championship Game beating Rutgers 39-0.  If Penn St. wins this week against Michigan St. and if Ohio St. beats Michigan, Penn St. goes to that playoff game because it beat Ohio St. head-to-head.  If that were to happen, it would give the CFP Selection Committee agita.

In the Big 12, Oklahoma St. beat TCU 31-6.  The upshot here is that the final regular season game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma St. in Norman, OK will be a big deal.  The championship of the Big 12 will be decided there.

Oklahoma put itself in that position by continuing to lead the Big 12 with an easy win over West Virginia 56-28.  Oklahoma led 28-0 in the first half and coasted home.  West Virginia turned the ball over so many times, it might appear that they put that sort of thing into their game plan:

  • They fumbled a punt away.
  • Twice they lost fumbles inside the Oklahoma 10 yardline in the 2nd quarter.
  • They threw a Pick Six.

K-State beat Baylor 42-21.  This makes 4 losses in a row for Baylor even though they led this game 14-7 at halftime.  Then the air went out of the Baylor balloon…

In the most surprising result of the week in Big 12 games, Iowa St. beat Texas Tech 66-10.  That is not a typo; that was really the score.  At halftime Iowa St. led 45-3.  Tech entered the game ranked third in the country in points per game (46) and had games where their passing offense was north of 500 yards.  Against Iowa St. – a team that was on the SHOE watchlist – the Tech total offense was only 306 yards and they were 4 for 14 on third down conversions.

This week Texas Tech and Baylor meet.  The ultimate question for that game is:

 

Which team is on the steeper downhill slope about now?

 

The Ponderosa Games:

 

Last week we had 10 Ponderosa Games and the record for favorites covering in those games was 4-6-0.  For the season, the record for favorites covering in Ponderosa games stands at 42-45-1.

BYU, Penn St., Western Michigan and Wisconsin covered.

Appalachian St., Boise St., Michigan, Texas, Texas A&M and Washington did not cover.

This week we have 8 Ponderosa Games:

 

(Fri Nite) Cincinnati at Tulsa – 24 (63):  There are about a dozen games on tap for the day after Thanksgiving.  Surely you can find a more interesting one than this…

 

Carolina at Clemson – 24 (50): A big rivalry game known as the Palmetto Bowl. Clemson is one of the best teams in the country – probably Top 5; South Carolina is a mediocre team – probably Top 75…

 

Syracuse at Pitt – 24.5 (67):  This game has the potential to be a high-scoring shootout.  Neither defense is memorable…

 

Kansas at Kansas St. – 26.5 (54):  If Kansas pulls another straight-up win as a Ponderosa underdog this week, someone needs to analyze their sideline Gatorade…

 

Troy – 27 at Texas St. (59):  Why is this game interesting?  It surely is not important but I cannot even find a reason to say it is interesting.  Oh, it is a Sun Belt Conference game.  Big deal…

 

W. Kentucky – 24 at Marshall (65): This is a C-USA game. Other than that, it is a “Who Cares Game”…

 

Rice at Stanford – 36 (54):  High SAT scores on the field and in the stands for this contest …

 

Kentucky at Louisville – 26.5 (75):  These schools are far more equally matched in basketball than they are in football…

 

The SHOE Teams:

 

Kansas has to come off the list for this week after winning as a Ponderosa underdog over Texas last week.  A blowout loss at Kansas St. this week might put them back on the list, but for a week they get a reprieve.

Here are by 8 SHOE Tournament candidates as of this week:

 

Bowling Green: 3-8 against MAC competition

Buffalo: 2-9 against MAC competition and they lost to Kent St. by 24 points

Fresno St.:  Record is 1-10.  Enough said…

Kent St.: 3-8 against MAC competition and they lost to Bowling Green by 35 last week

Rutgers: 2-9 record and 4 shutouts where they lost by a total of 224-0.

UMass: 2-9 record and 7 losses by double digits

UTEP:  3-8 and lost to Rice last week by 20 points.

 

Here are 6 teams that are still bad enough that I cannot be sure they will not sink to the level of a SHOE Tournament invitation:

 

  1. Arizona
  2. Kansas
  3. New Mexico St.
  4. Rice
  5. Texas St.
  6. Virginia

 

Games of Interest:

 

(Fri afternoon) Buffalo at Bowling Green – 13.5 (59):  Two SHOE Teams in a pillow-fight of a football game…

 

(Fri evening) Toledo at W. Michigan – 9 (69):  W. Michigan tries to extend its record to 12-0 for the season.  Toledo is 9-2.  The winner advances to the MAC Championship Game.  There should be lots of offense in this game; both teams score around 40 points per game on average.  Just for fun, I’ll take the game to go OVER.

 

(Fri afternoon) TCU at Texas – 3 (69):  Can a win for the Longhorns here save Charlie Strong’s job?  How big would that win have to be?  No pick in this game but it might have an interesting outcome.

 

(Fri afternoon) Boise St. – 9 at Air Force (64):  These teams bring a combined 18-4 record to this game.  Boise St. still hopes to be the “Non-Power Five” invitee to the Cotton Bowl game.  Air Force is also going to a bowl game but not that one.  Make this a venue call, I’ll take Air Force plus the points.

 

(Fri afternoon) Washington – 6 at Washington St (64.5):  This is the Apple Cup game; it is a major rivalry game in the great Northwest.  On top of the rivalry this year, the winner of this game will be the PAC-12 North champion and will play either Colorado or USC in the PAC-12 Championship game.  Washington’s loss for the year has been to a very good USC team.  Washington St. lost to a very good Colorado team and to Boise St.  I can deal with those…  The problem is that it lost to E. Washington – a very good Division 1-AA team but nonetheless a 1-AA team.  I like Washington to win and cover here.

 

(Fri evening) Texas Tech at Baylor – 5 (85):  Both teams probably cannot wait for this season to end.  This game is interesting only because it could represent a train wreck for one – or both – teams…

 

(Fri evening) Arizona St. – 3 at Arizona (68):  A big rivalry game between a mediocre Arizona St team and a bad Arizona team.  A blowout loss for Arizona could put them on the SHOE list…

 

Rutgers at Maryland – 13.5 (52):    Maryland needs a win to be bowl-eligible.  This game is at home against a SHOE Team.  If Maryland loses this game, the Big 10 should kick them out of the conference.  Of course, the Big 10 should kick Rutgers out no matter what the outcome here.

 

W Virginia – 7 at Iowa St. (57):  Is the Iowa St that clobbered Texas Tech last week the team that is going to show up here?  Can they catch lightening in a bottle again?  I don’t think so.  I like West Virginia to win and cover here.

 

Michigan St. at Penn St – 12.5 (54.5):  The question here is if Penn St. can keep its Big 10 Championship Game hopes alive.  If they win the Big 10 East, it will be fun and games for the CFP Selection Committee…

 

Minnesota at Wisconsin – 15 (44):  A Wisconsin win will assure that they will be in the big 10 Championship Game to take on whoever comes out of the East division.

 

Georgia Tech at Georgia – 4 (49):  A big rivalry game here…  These teams prefer to run the ball at one another meaning the clock should be running a lot.  I like this game to stay UNDER.

 

Virginia at Va Tech – 18 (54.5):  A big rivalry game here …  Even so, I am surprised that this line is so low.  Virginia is not a good team; they could be a SHOE Team.  Va Tech is not a great team but they are 8-3.  I like Va Tech to win and cover at home.

 

Auburn at Alabama – 17 (45.5):  A humongous rivalry game here …  Auburn lives and dies with its run game.  I don’t think they can do much business running the ball against Alabama.  I’ll take Alabama to win and cover at home.

 

Oregon – 3 at Oregon St. (71.5):  A big rivalry game here; they call it the Civil War.  I don’t think either team is any good so it is interesting only because of its rivalry status.

 

Utah at Colorado – 10 (54):  As noted above, a win for Colorado puts them in the PAC -12 championship Game against the winner of Washington/Washington St.  Utah took themselves out of contention for that slot with its loss to Oregon last week.  I think this will be a defensive game so I’ll take the game to stay UNDER.

 

Florida at Florida St. – 7.5 (45.5):  A big rivalry game here…  Given the Florida St. defense and the lack of an offense by Florida, I can see the Gators putting 10-13 points on the scoreboard.  The Florida defense is very good so I do not see Florida St. running wild but they should be able to muster 20 points.  I’ll take Florida St. and lay the points.

 

Tennessee – 7.5 at Vandy (54):  A big rivalry game here …  Tennessee has been disappointing this year after conjuring up enough hype to have folks think they were a top 10 team early on and might just challenge Alabama for SEC dominance.  Yeah, right!  The Tennessee defense ranks 98th in the country giving up 446.7 yards per game.  Vandy gives up 401.3.  This is a rivalry game where the team at home has the better defense and the home field advantage AND it is getting more than a TD’s worth of points.  I like Vandy plus the points at home.

 

Michigan at Ohio St – 6.5 (45.5):  A humongous rivalry game here … Michigan will have to play spectacular defense here to win this game; their starting QB for most of the year will not suit up for the game.  I do not think they can do that for 60 minutes against Ohio St in Columbus.  I like Ohio St. to win and cover.

 

Notre Dame at USC – 17.5 (57):  A big rivalry game here …  Normally, the spread for this game does not get into “three possession territory”.  However, this Notre Dame team has been anything but dominant this year beating only the likes of Nevada, Syracuse, Army and Miami (FL).  Meanwhile, USC is playing top-shelf football at the end of this season; they lost 3 early games but have not lost since September.  Purely a hunch here; I’ll take Notre Dame plus the points.

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