It's Getting Drafty

It used to be no one much paid attention to the NFL Draft. Now, for fans of football, the draft is nearly as important as a real season game.

I didn't bother to watch the draft, because that level of commitment is far more than I care to expend. I'll watch the star players, thank you. Or maybe just keep track of the players from the home team.

The funny thing about drafts is that it is the ultimate in not being satisfied with what you have. Throughout a season, someone will point out a deficiency in a team. A weak offensive line, a poor run defense, that kind of thing. And time and again, NFL teams choose to draft more of the same.

That wide receiver that we drafted so highly last year? Not good enough. Let's draft another. Maybe two or three more.

Lest this complaint be lodged at the NFL, the NBA draft seems to follow the same trend. Almost everyone repeats the mantra "pick the best player available", as if there were some absolute in how to pick the best player available.

On the rare lottery that the Washington Wizards picked first, who did Michael Jordan pick? The trend was high school players, and Kwame Brown, with the physical stature of the prototypical NBA player, fit the bill. He even promised "If you draft me, I won't disappoint you", only to be partly true about this promise, as he disappointed not just the Wizards, but the Lakers too. Thinking he had picked a guy with the same intensity and focus as him, Jordan discovered that Brown didn't respond to the verbal lashings like he would have. He saw too much of himself in Brown, and when that, predictably, failed to materialize, it made him lash out even more.

You might wonder how well a team would do if they let the fans pick their players for them. At the very least, they might draft what they actually need, but then fans are notoriously underinformed, except for the very few whose opinions would be washed out by the masses.

Draft season is great for columnists who universally pan the picks the local team has made, except for maybe a top 5 pick.

If there's any lesson from the draft, it's that the people who select rarely pick on what is needed, but what is desired, and that no one knows how to pick the next superstar.

Despite that, the team cognoscenti are content to keep on trying to read tea leaves and find that special missing ingredient.

Gibbs to Zorn

Daniel Snyder has always looked for the big name. When he bought the team (with others), he had Norv Turner as coach. He got an aging Deion Sanders, who didn't want to stay more than a year. Then, after Norv had a bad run of games, he was fired. Snyder really wanted Steve Spurrier, who he hoped, could bring his fun-n-gun style to the NFL and make it work. When the running game fared better, Spurrier decided he didn't want to win with a style he wasn't comfortable with.

Then, Snyder landed his biggest coup: getting Joe Gibbs back. Gibbs had won three Superbowls. He had been gone since winning the Superbowl in 1991. He had gone on to a very successful career in Nascar racing, owning and managing a team. When he came back, it was a bit rough going. In his four years at Washington, he made it to the playoffs twice, but in both cases, required a string of wins at the end just to make it in. He decided not to finish his fifth year, a decision partly prodded by the health of his grandson.

It was thought that Gregg Williams, the defensive coordinator, would take over as head coach. However, when he had to interview four times with Snyder, it was thought that his chances weren't good. They had had four years of watching him coach. If they wanted him, he'd be their man. Four interviews was something of an insult. The defense wanted him, if for no other reason, then to retain continuity.

The Redskins braintrust looked at a variety of coaches. They liked Jim Fassel, formerly coach of the Giants, and top contender the last go-around. They interview Steve Mariucci, former 49ers coach, and former Lions coach. They interviewed Ron Meeks, the African American defensive coordinator of the Indianapolis Colts. It was thought they might interview a coordinator from the Patriots. This didn't happen.

Then, they fired Williams and Al Saunders, the offensive coordinator, and then hired Jim Zorn, and promoted Greg Blatche to defensive coordinator. It seemed like a strange set of moves, hiring a staff before hiring a head coach. The last person the Redskins looked at seriously was Steve Spagnuolo, fresh off a Superbowl win, as the Giants defensive coordinator.

There were other possibilities, but it was never seriously entertained. Bill Cowher, former Steelers coach, wasn't ready to un-retire. Marty Schottenheimer probably wouldn't come back, even if Snyder could admit he wanted him back.

So it seemed strange that the choice went to Jim Zorn. Zorn was the quarterbacks coach for the Seattle Seahawks. People had thought he'd be a serious candidate to be an offensive coordinator, and so the Redskins tried to snatch him while they could. Then they decided he interviewed so well, that they would make him head coach.

This isn't so unusual. There are several new coaches in the NFL without previous head coaching experience, and even without coordinator experience. Still, for a guy used to making big hires, Snyder's choice of Zorn was weird, and to many fans, probably disappointing.

Still, you had to admire Snyder for this decision. While many people thought it despicable the way he ran Williams out, given that he appeared to be the players' choice, he made it clear that he (and Vinnie Cerrato) make the big decisions, not the players.

Zorn is remarkably down to earth for a head coach. While folks like Sally Jenkins, in her Washington Post column, told Spagnuolo to stay home, mostly because she felt the Redskins were dysfunctional, and that his career would get derailed going to the Redskins, I'm not so sure that Snyder and Cerrato made a bad decision.

Even if Zorn turns out to be a complete bust, it shows some maturity to pick a guy that isn't a name guy, and see if he's likely to be the next big one.

A Matter of Interpretation

Sports pundits do it all the time. They interpret the game. They tell you how the game went. How the winning team won. How the losing team lost. But the tale of the tape comes from the final results. The same events are interpreted one way if there's a win, and another way if there's a loss.

Last week, for instance, Eli Manning was brilliant. No interceptions. But we only remember it that way because the Giants won. To be fair, they should have won. With the Giants kicker missing two field goals, they relied on a Favre turnover in overtime and a suddenly steady kicker to win by a field goal. If Favre goes on a drive to win in OT, how brilliant is Eli? Instead, it's how much did the kicker choke.

This week, Tom Brady had a drive in the fourth quarter that might have lead his team to victory. Had that been the final score, people would have said that Brady does what he does best. He wills his team to win. He scores when he has to score. Even if the score would have been 14-10, they would have called this Patriots team the best ever, and that drive would have shown how Brady and Patriots simply find a way. This was how they mostly played in the playoffs. Not dominating football, but finding a way to win.

Instead, it was Eli Manning making that final drive, and while Brady's drive was important, in the end it was Brady's last minute (last 30 seconds, really) hail Mary that mattered most (and Moss had the ball in his hands, if only for a brief instant). He almost made it happen again.

But the penultimate drive? Irrelevant. Brady wasn't himself. He was a choker. His team couldn't produce the offense they had all season.

The funny thing? Both statements are true. Brady did not have a good game, partly because the Giants did. But had his last scoring drive been the last drive, then he would have come back, willed his team to win.

Those same events take a different look when viewed through the lens of a loss.

And that's how sportswriters think, or frankly, don't think.

The Last Drive

To get a sense of how improbable the last drive by the Giants were. On a 3rd and 10, a pass to Toomer, to make it 4th and 1. A run by Jacobs to get the first down.

On a 3rd and 5, with Manning about to get sacked, he breaks free and makes a 32 yard pass to Tyree, who catches it by wedging the ball between his hand and helmet and falling down.

On a 2nd and 11, he makes a pass, which is in the receiver's hands, but eventually drops it. The advantage was that the clock doesn't tick, which is important, since the Giants are burning timeouts to keep this drive alive (they had all three timeouts, plus the two minute warning, effectively a fourth timeout). The next play is a pass to Steve Smith, who is a little short of the first down, takes two steps to get to first down, before he is shoved out of bounds. That one was also key, since it's 3rd down.

Finally, a lovely deep lob to Plaxico Burress to give the Giants the 3 point lead, leaving the Patriots with a little over 30 seconds to make it across the field and score the winning touchdown, which, by the way, never happened.

In general, while the two-minute drill is the one people remember, of teams that come back at the last moment, it's generally pretty hard to score. Teams with leads at the end of games usually win. It's better to be up and have to prevent the other side from scoring than down and try to score. The defense, needless to say, came up bigger for the Giants than the Patriots.

This was a nice game that wasn't determined by last minute field goals, but by the majority of the players on the field. And the win was all due to an improbable drive at the end.

People say the Patriots looked vulnerable, and they did. But people would still have penciled in that team as the best ever if that last drive doesn't succeed. They would have said fans were whining if the final score had been 14-10, a score that would have signaled victory, but not a definitive one.

So, the defenses kept this game interesting all the way to the end, which is as much as one can hope for in a Superbowl.

Brother Where Art Thou

At the beginning of the season, both Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning were happy to still be on the Giants. To be sure, Manning was the likely one to stay. The management decided to keep Coughlin. The team started 0-2, and there were more cries to release Coughlin, and Eli was looking like a bust.

Then, they won 6 games in a row, and, for a moment, such cries were let silent. New York continued to play unevenly, winning one week, losing the next, and managing enough wins to sneak in as a wildcard. They would play on the road throughout the playoffs, but the Giants had a particularly good road record, and would prove that during this year's playoffs beating Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Green Bay to become the improbable representative of the NFC for the Super Bowl.

The key, of course, was the defense. If the defense couldn't keep New England in check, to keep the score close, then Eli would probably not provide enough magic to matter. When the Patriots only had a 7-3 lead into the half, and this score held until the Giants managed to score a TD with 11 minutes to go, making the lead 10-7.

At this point, it looked like the Patriots would do what they do so well. Win. Another long drive to a touchdown, punctuated by penalties that kept the drive alive. It left the Giants with a little over 3 minutes to have to score a touchdown because they were down 4 points, not 3.

It didn't look that good. After a first down right away, Eli struggled trying to make completions, going to a 3rd and 10, then a 4th and 1. Then, on another 3rd and 10, Eli looked like he was going to get sacked, when he managed to wiggle out, make a long toss to Tyree who literally wedged a catch between his hand and his helmet.

Eventually, Eli tossed a high floater to Plaxico Burress, and that gave the Giants a lead, giving the Patriots only 30 seconds to have to get into field goal position. Despite one long throw to Moss that just fell out of his hands, the Patriots were done.

The funny thing is that if that catch were made, or if Eli gets sacked, then the Patriots win, and we say, despite the close score, just how good the Patriots were. Of course, the games against the Ravens, the Eagles, the Colts, and even the Giants showed the Patriots were vulnerable, but they still won, and had they won, they would still have been undefeated despite these close calls.

So Eli manages to do in four years what it took Peyton 9 years to do. He has to hand it to his defense that kept him in the game.

Peyton may still go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, but sometimes it's good to have a great team, a great defense, and a little luck. And Eli will take that win any way it comes.

21

The Washington Redskins had devoted the rest of their season to the memory of Sean Taylor, shot and killed in his own residence in Miami. They needed to win all the games heading to the end of the season, and with Todd Collins, a veteran backup QB, a guy who hadn't started a game in ten years, they won 4 games in a row, and barely made the wildcard.

They earned a trip to meet the Seattle Seahawks, a team that had beaten them two years ago in the playoffs. This year, they seemed a lot more solid, despite not playing the elite teams in their streak. Matt Hasselbeck (which everyone seems to pronounce "HasselBACK") is a very good quarterback. But really, what won it for the Seahawks was defense.

The defense harassed the Redskins, hurrying, hitting, and knocking down Todd Collins. The offensive line wasn't giving him the kind of protection he's had the last few weeks. Two years ago, Clinton Portis was contained by the Seahawks, and they did a good job containing him again. Unlike the game with the Vikings where they ran against a very good run defense, Portis never quite got on track, and Collins ended up throwing.

Still, after a half, with Seattle up 13-0, there was a sense that if the Redskins could get momentum, they could still come back. Two scores isn't awful.

Then, they scored 7. And then 7 more. And pretty soon, they were up 14-13.

Then, a weird kickoff where the Seattle players couldn't handle the bounce. The Redskins picked up the ball and ran it in for a touchdown. Or not. As it turns out, you can't advance the ball in what amounts to be an onsides kick (though in this case, an unintentional onsides kick, i.e., a regular kick that the defense didn't get a hold of).

So the Redskins had the ball on the opposing team's 14 yard line, and this should be, for any playoff team, a gimme. Great field position should mean a touchdown, and at worst, a field goal. And yet again, the defense held stout. The Redskins had to settle for a 30 yard field goal, and Suisham was there to deliver a 4 point lead.

Only the ball hooked just a touch, and there was no score, and so the Redskins hung to their 1 point lead, when they had a great chance to make it 8 points and take control of the game.

Instead, buoyed by their luck, Hasselbeck drove down the field to move the Seahawks up 19-14. The decided to go for 2 points to move the lead to 7 points, or the equivalent of a standard TD and extra point conversion. That was successful, and they were up 21-14.

But it was simply one score now, and it looked to be a dogfight to the end. Except Collins lofted a long pass on a play that Santana Moss simply gave up on, figuring the play was broken, and figuring Collins wouldn't dare make the pass. Moss's defender didn't think so, caught the pass, and blazed past a befuddled Moss, and weaved his way to the endzone. 28-14. And that huge turnaround blew the momentum from the Redskins.

Let's face it, the Redskins had their chances. They blew it by not scoring, and then by turning the ball over. To add insult to injury, they turned the ball over once more for a touchdown, and the Seahawks were up 35-14.

As much as the Redskins saw their 21 point victory last week as a sign of their fallen comrade, Sean Taylor, who wore the number 21, the number 21 appeared again. This time, in a loss.

The Redskins lost by 21 points.

OBC

Steve Spurrier spent ten plus years as head coach of the University of Florida Gators football team. He only spent two years as head coach of the Washington Redskins. But it shows the difference between a big NFL team and a big college team.

Steve Spurrier grew up in Tennessee, but was not recruited by Tennessee. Instead, he went to Florida where he became quarterback of Florida. As quarterback, he won the Heisman Trophy, kicking a field goal(!) to win a game (he had done some kicking in high school).

When he came to Washington, people made fun of his Southern accent, as they seem to do throughout the country, except, of course in the South (and sometimes even there). Spurrier also brought two phrases that became part of the football vernacular. He brought "old ball coach" (he was the OBC) and "pitch and catch" using baseball terms for throwing the ball.

Even now, years after he left the Redskins, you hear the phrase "pitch and catch" to refer to throwing the ball. Much like "Mother of all X", the phrase derived from "mother of all wars", a phrase attributed to Saddam Hussein (now hardly ever heard, but in its time, a particularly evocative, though strangely foreign way of phrasing the Iraqi confrontation).

They just showed Heath Shuler in a bowl game introduction of the players. Heath Shuler was Peyton Manning before Peyton Manning, but where Manning had a career (to say the least), Shuler was a bust as a Redskins, and eventually decided to go into real estate and then into politics. He looks a heck of a lot like Roger Clemens though.

Today's New Year's and in addition to ringing in the new year, there's a bunch of bowl games (college football games) for teams that did well enough to qualify. January 1 games (and later) are considered the prestigious games. Tennessee plays Wisconsin.

Bowling for Bucks

There's one constant in the American sportswriting universe. Complaining about the BCS. The BCS is the "Bowl Championship Series" and was meant to address a problem that used to occur rather commonly prior to the BCS.

In Division 1 college football, which is the football most people care about (divisions 2 and 3 are from smaller colleges, with far less talent), there are no playoffs. Instead, there are a bunch of bowls which invite teams to play. Some bowls, such as the Rose Bowl, and conference tie-ins.

Most football teams belong to a conference. For example, Maryland belongs to the ACC short for the Atlantic Coast Conference. Each conference has between about 8 and 12 teams. The teams play most of their games in conference. The teams with the best record at the end of the season might play in a conference championship (for a long time, the ACC, with 9 teams, did not have a conference championship, but then 3 universities joined the ACC, to make it 12 teams, and now they have one).

This past weekend was championship weekend for those that hold championships (oddly enough, the Big Ten doesn't hold one). There's usually room for upset, because a team that is vying for a BCS bowl bid must usually win their conference championship, and thus be forced to play another strong team. This hurt many teams this weekend as Missouri and West Virginia lost this past weekend, both with chances to play in the national championships.

But back to the BCS. The BCS originally had four bowls: Sugar, Orange, Rose, and Fiesta. They would take 8 teams. One of the bowls was designated as the national championship, which would rotate every year (one year Sugar, one year Rose, etc).

To decide who played in the national champion, a BCS ranking was set up, which used a combination of polls by people, computer rankings, and strength of schedule (how strong your opponents were and the quality of victory) to determine a ranking. At the end of the year, #1 would play #2. The other bowls would then take the best of the rest.

You see, prior to the BCS, the bowls had affiliation with conferences, and so it was quite common that #1 would not play #2, because, for example, the Rose Bowl wanted the Pac-10 champion vs. the Big-10 champ, and one might be #1, while the other might be #5.

The BCS doesn't remove the bowl system, but at least attempts to put #1 and #2 together. Except, each year, it creates issues. You might have one undefeated team that's good, and they're #1, but have a hard time deciding who #2 should be. There might be several one loss teams, each having a legitimate shot at #2.

This year, there was only one undefeated team, Hawaii, but it was in a conference so weak that no one seriously considered them #1 (indeed, they barely squeaked out many of their wins, including a Washington team that had a losing record). Several one-loss teams had their chances too, but blew it this past weekend. This lead to the final of Ohio State with one loss against LSU with two losses (both in triple overtime).

This year, they decided to add two more games to the BCS. Thus, in addition to the four bowl games, one of the four sites serves as the national championship the following week, which is why they held the national championship on January 8, when it used to be January 2 (then 4th). There were some plans to have a permanent site for the national championship, but instead, one of the bowls serves as the site twice (on a rotating basis).

This allowed Boise State, a smallish university to compete in one of the BCS bowls, and upset a much higher ranked Oklahoma, going for a gutsy two-point conversion with a Statue of Liberty play (a fake pass, then giving the ball to a runner going the opposite direction).

What most sports reporters want is a playoff system. They argue that Division 2 has a playoff system. Why doesn't Division 1? College presidents like the bowl system because it allows for many happy coaches. With something close to 30 bowl games, there are something close to 30 winners. In a playoff system, there might be one winner out of, say, 8 teams. The other bowls would be minor in nature (not that they aren't already).

Some college presidents (why they care is always a mystery to me, but it goes to show you the power of college sports in universities) argue that students would be taken out of class (as if they were picked for their academic abilities).

So every year, sports reporters (more like pundits, since most don't report, but weigh in on their opinion) complain how awful the BCS is, and every year, no one particularly listens.

Eight teams would put some teams in the discussion, though the last few teams would always be complaining. For example, many people see USC and Georgia as two teams that are playing pretty hot right now, but both had two losses, so despite playing good football, they were out of the national championship discussion.

But you can pretty much guarantee that next year, the reporters will complain about the BCS yet again. It's a rite of winter, and allows lazy reporters to rehash the same arguments again and again.

More Trinity

The quality of this video should be better. Still hard to see the football hitting the ground on the last lateral.

Lateral Thinking

Normally, ESPN doesn't give a hoot about Division 3 football. They say the last true amateurs in college sports compete in Division 3. Division 1 is the premier division. All the football, baseball, basketball that you see is Division 1 with rare exception. When kids graduate from high school and want to play in college, they want Division 1.

Division 3 is for the rest of them. Those who lack the talent to play at a higher level, or perhaps some lack of luck. They don't get many fans. A few of them are smart enough to have career doing something else besides sports.

But occasionally, something so unusual happens, that even ESPN takes a few moments to give Division 3 its due.

In this case, it's a 15 lateral sequence. In case you don't know that much about football, you can only throw one forward pass. However, you can throw as many backward passes as you want. A backward pass is called a lateral.

Why throw it backwards when the goal is to throw it forwards? Throwing the ball moves the ball faster than runners can run. But when you throw it backwards, you need to run forward to compensate.

The quality of the video is poor, so there's one part that's hard to see. On the last lateral, the ball hits the ground, and the player lifts it up, and runs into the endzone for a score. Apparently, it's legal.

Oh yeah, the two teams are Trinity and Millsaps. I can't really tell you much more than that.

Monday Night Madness

It's been, what, 13 years? More? Since the Buffalo Bills were featured on Monday Night Football. MNF used to be the premier showcase for football. Invented in the 70s, it gave football fans another day to watch football. For the teams playing, they were the sole focus. No other games were played.

But Buffalo hasn't been good in years, and so they haven't had opportunities to be showcased.

Last night, they wanted to make the most of their opportunity. Tony Romo seemed happy to oblige turning the ball over some five times. Normally, such generosity is rewarded with a loss. However, despite such ineptitude, Dallas was still in the game.

Down 24-16, Dallas needed a touchdown with a 2 point conversion to tie the game. Late in the fourth quarter, they had a fourth quarter touchdown strike to Patrick Crayton. The two point up-for-grabs went to TO, but it was stripped from his hands. And yet, Dallas still had a chance.

They could go for an onsides kick and try to recover.

Normally, once you score, you kick to the other team, and they get a chance to be on offense. However, you can, more or less, attempt to kick it back to yourself. The ball must travel at least ten yards on the kickoff. The success rate is abysmally low.

However, somehow, it bumped off a player, and was recovered by Dallas, which had less than a minute to win the game.

Romo tossed the ball to Owens who appeared to catch it. Then, they had to quickly spike the ball, which they did with a second to go. But replay showed that TO had actually dropped the ball, and so it was incomplete, and so seconds were added back to the clock since the clock stops at the incomplete.

Romo made one throw where the receiver went out of bounds. 60 yards for the field goal. He had 7 seconds, so he could get off one more play to bring the field goal attempt closer than the ridiculous 60 yards.

The second pass attempt was also good and made the field goal attempt 52 yards which was still far, but manageable for the best field goal kickers. Nick Folk was basically a rookie, having never hit at that distance, except in practice. As he kicked and the ball sailed through the uprights, the umpires said timeout had been called just as he was kicking.

He was forced to kick again, and again, the ball flew true, and Dallas won the game by one point, stealing Buffalo's thunder, redeeming drops by TO, interceptions by Romo, and further jabbing the decade long futility of Buffalo. It has to hurt that with so many botches on Dallas's side that they still won, making one improbably completion after another.

And sometimes that's why it's fun to watch football on a Monday night.