4 posts tagged “football”

Peyton Manning and Prince were both so good in the Super Bowl yesterday that I think it made people forget how hard their jobs are. People are complaining that Manning was good rather than great, but I think that they are judging by clear, sunny day standards, rather than playing in a driving rain standards. Prince didn't help the players out at all in that regard. If the halftime show had been horrible due to the inclement weather, people probably would have been more impressed with how hard it is to play in that kind of rain. But Prince was great, just wailing on the electric guitar, standing in a rainstorm. Sometimes people are undermined by their own greatness.

I have no good reason to care about the AFC Championship game this afternoon, but I still want the Colts to win. Peyton Manning is the best quarterback in the NFL by any objective measurement, other than Super Bowl wins. Super Bowl wins are nice, but they really don't say much about a quarterback's individual performance. Plenty of mediocre quarterbacks have won Super Bowls, several truly great quarterbacks never won the big one.

Because Peyton Manning has never won a Super Bowl, some people refuse to acknowledge that he is truly great. I find this widely held opinion jarring, and if the Colts win today, and even better, if they win the Super Bowl, it will no longer exist. So even though I don't really care about Peyton Manning one way or another, or the Colts, or the Patriots, I have a strong rooting interest in seeing the universe become slightly more ordered.

Here's a column from John Clayton at ESPN. In the column he explains why the Patriots beat the Chargers in a playoff game this weekend. Note that both teams have had excellent seasons, and that the game was decided by the barest of margins. The Patriots won 24-21. As in any close game, the outcome turned as much on freak bounces of the ball as it did on anything else. For example, on one of the key plays in the game, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady threw an interception on fourth down, and one of the Patriots receivers stripped the ball and the Patriots recovered, giving them a first down that led to a score.

But the idea that the outcome of close games hinges on luck more than it does on character is boring, so sports writers ignore it. It's much more entertaining to think of games as soap operas where the guys with "heart" win and the guys who are "playing not to lose" go down in defeat.

I think that this kind of sports writing taps into a basic human impulse that forces us to deny the fact that many things in life are basically beyond our control. The idea that we might be hit by a bus on the way to work through no fault of our own is terrifying. The idea that we have hundreds of people confined at a detention center in Cuba because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time is unthinkable. And the idea that one team wins a football game and another team loses because a ball bounces in the wrong direction is fundamentally unsatisfying. So we make up fairy tales to discount this uncertainty and go on with the illusion that things are well ordered. Whatever gets people through the day, I guess.

Boise State 2 point conversion

The crowning play in last night's Fiesta Bowl instant classic was the Statue of Liberty play that Boise State ran in overtime to give them the one point win over Oklahoma. First of all, the audacity of using the Statue of Liberty play in that situation is incredible. The play (where the quarterback pretends to pass and hands the ball behind his back to a runner) is most commonly used by kids playing football in their front yards. The idea of using it in a crucial situation in a major college game is absurd. We may never see it in the NFL.

The main reason that play and other trick plays aren't used often is that these days players are usually well coached and incredibly athletic, so they make few mistakes and when they do make mistakes their physical skills can compensate for them. So when I watched the play, I wondered how Boise State got away with it. The running back is right there loitering behind the quarterback until he's handed the ball, then he scampers off into the end zone untouched.

On the second watching, I noticed that Oklahoma's weak side linebacker was assigned to keep an eye on that back. He stayed at home and watched the back, ready to take him on if he went out for a pass or otherwise got the ball. On the third watching, I noticed that Boise State's left offensive tackle was in position to block the linebacker, and successfully kept him out of the play, insuring that Boise State would score. The fourth time I watched, I saw that the block was by design. The tackle pretended that he was going to pass block, and then looped around the tight end (who was blocking the defensive end) and sealed off the linebacker assigned to the running back. The rest is history.

The play illustrates the best thing about football, which is the tactical chess match between the coaches. It all starts with the fact that this play is a variation of a two point conversion play Boise State had run previously in the season. Boise State's coach knew that Oklahoma's coach would have seen it and would have prepared his team to defend it. So he used that knowledge to start the misdirection. He must also have known that Oklahoma would keep a player in position to stop the running back in that situation, and made sure that he'd have a blocker there to keep that from happening. The rest was up to the players, who executed the play to perfection. Football at its best.