Stupid Rule 2

While baseball has a stupid rule or two–one less next year, as I’ll discuss later–football has a doozy that has more actual impact on the game: the fumble-out-of-the-end-zone-for-a-touchback rule. When this rule was invoked against the Vikings in mid-season it may have cost them a win and led to general speculation that the rule would be changed in the offseason. Now that it almost cost the Kansas City Chiefs their spot in the AFC championship game, on national television, the chances of a change must have gone up exponentially. The “rule” is this: when an offense fumbles and the ball goes out of the end zone without being recovered, a touchback is called and the team on defense gets the ball on the 20-yard-line. The team on offense, which has worked its way downfield, not only gets nothing, it loses possession. Why? There is no equitable reason for such a result. If a player fumbles out of bounds anywhere else, his team retains possession and the ball is spotted at the site of the fumble. There should, obviously, be no reward, in terms of yards gained, for fumbling. But the defense, which may have caused the fumble but was not able to recover it, gets no reward. Why should it be any different at the goal line? If the defense recovers the ball in the end zone, it’s a touchback. There’s no reason the outcome should be identical when they don’t recover! The fix is obvious: apply the same rule that governs fumbles everywhere else on the field. The offense keeps possession at the spot of the fumble. If there is something different about an end-zone fumble and you want to penalize the offense accordingly, spot the ball back at the 10. But there’s nothing different and that makes no sense.
Getting back to baseball: the late Gordon Harriss and I once had extended debate about the injustice (my position) of calling the batter out when he is hit by a throw from the catcher while running to first base inside the foul line. My point was that for a righthanded hitter, the natural, direct route from the batter’s box to first is necessarily inside the foul line and it makes no sense, and is impractical, to require him to reroute his path to the bag. The Rules Committee finally recognized this injustice by creating a lane inside the foul line where, from now on, the runner to first will be protected. Hallelujah!

Women’s World Cup

Much of the reporting on the USWNT’s overtime loss concentrated on Sweden’s winning penalty kick, which crossed the goal line by one, or maybe two, millimeters after being largely saved by US goalie Alyssa Naeher. Had it been saved, however, there was no guarantee the result would have been any different. The US would still have had to convert a penalty and hope for a corresponding Swedish miss, when the US women had already flubbed three of their last four tries. No, the crucial game-defining moment was Sophia Smith’s attempt. The US, thanks to Naeher’s save, had a 3-2 lead. If Smith scored, the US would be up 4-2 with only one Swedish shot to go. I was already envisioning an American celebration. The press, however, has been nice to her, which is okay, but different than they would be to, say, Kirk Cousins. She is young, gifted and Black, and has a lot of time to make people forget this one bad moment. Megan Rapinoe’s shot was even worse. As it turned out, the Americans would have won if she had converted, although we didn’t know that at the time (Naeher’s save came later and effectively neutralized the damage for the moment). Rapinoe, the face of women’s soccer and, indeed, of women’s sports for the last decade, was understandably given a pass as well. Kelley O’Hara was the third US player to miss–her soft shot (why?) bounced off the post–giving Sweden its opportunity to close out the match. O’Hara had been substituted into the game in the final minute (along with Kristie Mewis, who made her shot), solely to take a penalty kick if needed. One is tempted to blame the coach as much as O’Hara for putting her in that spot. Why not let the players who have played 120 minutes get to decide the outcome?
I am not a goalie, although I played one for the Aujila town team in Libya, but I wonder that goalies invariably dive left or right when facing a penalty kick. Yes, they generally have a 50/50 chance of guessing the correct direction, but that is not enough. If the shot is higher than their outstretched arm or too hard to stop, the correct guess won’t matter. Of the ten penalties on goal in this game, the goalies dove in the right direction a majority of the time but stopped only one shot. If I were a shooter–and I only attempted one penalty kick in my soccer career–I would aim straight ahead. There’s less, maybe no, chance of missing the net, and so long as the goalie dives, it doesn’t matter in which direction she goes. Naeher was the only shooter who took this route, scoring easily. The converse advantage for the goalie is that if she stays on her line and guesses right, the save will be relatively easy, whether the kick is low, high, hard or soft. Even if the US is no longer playing, I’ll be watching how penalty kicks play out the rest of this World Cup. And I’ll be rooting for Japan.

PS: The penalty shootout in the Australia-France game underscored just how bad the U.S. effort was. The two teams combined for twenty (20!) PKs, and not one went over the crossbar. All 20 were well struck; and while three hit the post and four were saved, or vice versa, none of the strikers were as embarrassed as the three missing Yanks should have been.

Super Bowl ’23

Did the Chiefs win or did the Eagles lose the Super Bowl? Or did the officials decide it?

By my eyeball test, the Eagles were the better team, and statistically Jalen Hurts was the better quarterback. But the teams were close enough in quality that mistakes made the difference: I count five for the Eagles, only two for the Chiefs, and three points is what separated them. Mistake #1, both in time and impact, was Hurts’s unaided fumble that was picked up and run in for a Chiefs touchdown. At that point, it looked like the Eagles would blow the Chiefs out of the water; the free touchdown kept the Chiefs in striking distance for their second-half comeback. Mistake #2 was the line-drive punt in the 4th quarter that Kadarius Toney returned 67 yards, a Super Bowl record, setting up an easy touchdown drive. In fairness to the punter, the Eagles did have two defenders who could have, and maybe should have, tackled Toney before he got started; but a good punt would have prevented any runback at all. Mistakes #3 and 4 were, shockingly, identical: the man coverage that the Eagles ran when the Chiefs were at the 5-yard line which resulted, both times, in the easiest touchdown completions I saw all year. The Chiefs ran the same play both times, just on opposite sides with different receivers: a “whip” route in which the man-in-motion reversed course and went back toward the sideline, while his defender continued across the field in the other direction. Whether it was the call or the execution, it was extraordinary, and inexcusable, to give away touchdowns so easily. Mistake #5 I’ll get to in a minute.

Although the Chiefs did not play inspired football in the first half, they didn’t give much away. They did miss a routine field goal try (Mistake #1), and we know how important every 3 points turned out to be. Then in the second half they blew coverage on a deep pass from Hurts that covered 47 yards down to the 3-yard line, where Hurts’s quarterback sneak machine was unstoppable.

The Eagles’ Mistake #5 was the defensive hold called on James Bradbery that allowed the Chiefs to run out the clock before kicking the winning field goal. I wish the official hadn’t called it, and given how many minor infractions go unpunished he certainly didn’t have to call it. It was the only “ticky-tack” penalty of the game. It didn’t affect the play, as Mahomes’s pass flew well over the receiver’s head. Without the call, the Chiefs would have kicked the field goal and still taken a 38-35 lead. But the Eagles would have gotten the ball back with more than a minute to play, and we would have seen just what Hurts could do in that desperate situation. That’s pretty much the way we want every NFL game to end. Not with an official’s call.

Vikings ’22

The Minnesota Vikings’ miraculous 2022 season was brought to a merciful close by the New York Giants last Sunday. The 31-24 loss was a respectable score to bow out with, and it saved the Vikings from being utterly humiliated in the next round. Maybe they wouldn’t have lost as badly as the Giants did to the Eagles (38-7), because they would have played the 49ers instead, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. Of the Vikings’ 13 regular-season wins, 11 were by one score or less and almost all of them could have as easily been losses. They were consistently outgained on offense and ended the season giving up more points than they scored. The fact that they won so many games–especially over the Bills and the Giants–was an undeserved pleasure. Early in the season they managed to face a string of backup quarterbacks, which helped, and the schedule was soft. Next year, because they won their division, their schedule will be much tougher, and it is not impossible that their record will go from 13-4 to 4-13.

For as long as I can remember, the Vikings have not had an offensive line that can protect their quarterback. I watch other teams, not just Tom Brady’s, and I see quarterbacks scanning the field before picking out a target to throw to. The Vikings qb has to throw on first look or he’s dead. I’m not a huge fan of Kirk Cousins (more later), but I have to give him credit on two accounts. One, he is as accurate a passer as there is in the game. Second, he is amazingly durable. Almost every other NFL team lost its quarterback to injury at some point in the season; Cousins started and finished every game, despite the porous line in front of him. It’s to Cousins’s credit that Justin Jefferson was able to lead the league in receptions and receiving yards, and T.J. Hockenson set team records for a tight end. Adding to the degree of difficulty was the Vikings’ weak running game, which often left Cousins with difficult third-and-long situations.

The knock against Cousins is two-fold. He is immobile, a style that has gone out of fashion in the era of Jalen Hurts, Justin Fields, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, even Daniel Jones. The next rap is epitomized by his final pass of the season, when, faced with a do-or-die fourth and 8, he threw a 3-yard checkdown pass to Hockenson, effectively ending the game. Bad decision-making, or lack of courage in the clutch was the criticism that came with him from his time in Washington. Not throwing the ball downfield in that situation was inexplicable and inexcusable, especially with Jefferson angling over the middle, regardless of how he was covered. It used to be, “he can’t win on Monday Night Football,” or “he can’t win on national television,” or “he can’t win the big one.” Well, he did pretty darn well in most of those games this year; so it was disappointing, and a little disheartening, to see him regress at the very end.

The Vikings’ big problem this year, however, wasn’t their quarterback or even the outmanned offensive line. It was their defense, statistically the worst (or almost the worst) in the NFL.  They were pretty good, or lucky, in the red zone, but opposing teams had very little trouble marching down the field to get there. Their consistent four-man pass rush never got to the quarterback; any sacks they had were the result of the quarterback holding the ball forever or scrambling. For some reason, they rarely blitzed. Nor was their run defense notable. The defensive backs never played man-to-man and their zone seemed designed to allow completions up to 15 yards in the middle. Maybe they were slow, as the critics complained, or maybe their coverage was too predictable or just too loose. In any event, it is hard to think of a player on defense that I am excited about having come back next year.

And where will the help for next year come from? I believe they have only four draft picks, which doesn’t begin to cover their needs: e.g., offensive linemen, defensive backs, pass rushers, and a quarterback-in-training. They will have to cut at least four of their veterans for salary-cap purposes. And not only will they need new starters: the toll of injuries on every team has shown the need for depth at almost every position. For the Twins, hope springs eternal. For the Vikings, I fear a coming drought.

Super Bowl ’22

The Rams’ 23-20 win over the Bengals was basically a defensive showcase, with most plays going nowhere. There were, however, about ten plays that stood out and provided all the conversational fodder that was needed, and the game, as had the preceding six playoff contests, came down to the final two-minute drill.

The biggest single play, for me, was the stop by Aaron Donald when the Bengals had third-and-one on the 50-yard line with 30 seconds to play. He reached around a blocker and pulled the running back backward. The officials, in my view, also gave the Bengals a bad spot, but the runner would still have been short. If the Bengals had made the first down, they would have had three cracks at throwing at least a ten-yard pass to get in field goal range. Fourth-and-one was simply too desperate a situation and Donald’s coup de grace was no surprise.

The unwarranted defensive holding call on Logan Wilson, who had just spectacularly knocked down a pass to Cooper Kupp at the 2-yard line on third-and-goal was the next biggest play. To say that it compensated for the officials missing offensive interference on the Bengals’ second touchdown is fair, but in the moment it seemed more decisive. Had the Bengals not committed a helmet-to-helmet hit on the next play in the end zone, the Rams would have had 15 difficult yards instead of 1 to get their winning score. The simultaneous holding by the Rams affected the play in a way the personal foul did not, so they weren’t quite equal.

It’s too bad that an almost penalty-free game ended up with three consecutive penalties costing the Bengals in the final minute, as it inevitably leaves a sour taste in the mouths of Cincinnati fans and somewhat dilutes the greatness of Matthew Stafford’s final drive. But in a way it makes American football comparable to real football, what we call soccer, where fans almost expect a game to be decided by a referee’s call, often bad. That’s part of the game.

The other big plays were the Bengals’ failure to make a 4th-and-1 at midfield, leading to a Rams field goal; while the Rams, specifically Kupp, made their 4th-and-1 to keep the winning drive alive. Conversely, the Bengals one trick play, a halfback pass by Joe Mixon, succeeded, while the Rams’ version of the Philly Special, with Kupp passing to Stafford, failed laughably.

There was only one memorable offensive play all day: Jamari Chase’s one-handed grab of a 45-yard pass from Joe Burrow with Galen Ramsey draped over him. (Again, the officials inexplicably gave the Bengals a bad spot, about four yards further from the goal line, which may have contributed to their inability to convert a touchdown.) Rather, it was the defensive line play that stood out, for both teams. For me, the game ball should go to the Rams’ defensive line, with Aaron Donald in the lead.

Flores v. Goodell

Some sports columnists are lauding ex-Dolphin coach Brian Flores for challenging the NFL for its dearth of Black head coaches, and commissioner Roger Goodell has said he finds it “completely unacceptable” that the roster of Black coaches has been reduced to one. Critics point out that 70% of the NFL players are Black, as if that requires that a larger percentage of coaches be Black, although no one is quite saying that percentage need by 70%. “Lack of diversity” in the head-coaching ranks is tossed about as a self-evident offense.
But in my view, “diversity” in this context is meaningless. Yes, if you have a company or a political body or a committee, it is valuable, even important, that diverse voices and backgrounds be included. The days of ten white males making decisions that affect others are, or should be, over. But the 32 NFL head coaches are not one body. They do not get together and make decisions. Each runs a separate organization. There should be diversity in their staffs, and there is; but that is within an organization. Each owner has the right, and the obligation, to choose the individual he thinks will do the best job running his team, without any consideration of what the other 31 owners are doing. The idea that any team should hire a Black coach because the other teams haven’t is absurd.

Contrast this with the “debate” over whether Biden should name a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Republicans, conveniently overlooking Clarence Thomas (and Amy Coney Barrett), are screaming that Biden must pick based on qualifications for the job, not because of someone’s gender or color. The Supreme Court, however, is precisely the venue where diversity, per se, matters. There is no “best person for the job.” There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of lawyers who are qualified and could handle the job (most third-year law students felt this way). What is important for the Supreme Court, once basic qualifications are established, is that its members reflect the society that will be impacted by its decisions. There are constituencies besides Black females that could claim they should be represented, but this is a good place to start. The over-representation of Catholics cuts the other way.

Flores claims that the “Rooney Rule,” the NFL’s rule that two minority candidates must be interviewed for any head coaching job, is a sham. I’m sure some teams treat it that way. But so what? The Rooney Rule has no legal force. The league can’t make any of its owners hire anyone. All it can do is make them take a look. If a Black coach thinks he is being used, he doesn’t have to agree to the interview. Some interview, somewhere along the line, may open some eyes. It’s better than nothing, which is what existed before. There is a discussion to be had as to why there are so many more white coaches, but that’s for another day and another place.

Defenseless

I can’t remember an NFL team being so overmatched on both the offensive and defensive lines as were the Vikings in their Christmas Day loss to the New Orleans Saints. The Minnesota secondary wasn’t much better, either. The Vikings gave us 53 points, the most since 1963, and that number would have been higher had Drew Brees not thrown two interceptions, one bouncing off his receiver’s hands. The Saints not only never had to punt, they almost never faced a third down. Alvin Kamara scored six rushing touchdowns, a record, and could have had seven but for the coach’s decision to keep him off the field when Tayson Hill ran in a two-yard score. A typical running play gained 7 yards, and when Brees passed there was rarely a defender near his receiver. Harrison Smith, usually reliable, missed multiple tackles and looked a step short all day. On the offense, the Vikings had a few quality performers, mainly the receiving corps of Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen and Irv Smith, but qb Kirk Cousins never had the time to throw downfield. The Saints were tricking or finessing the Vikings blockers, they were simply pushing them back into Cousins’s pocket. On one play highlighted on TV, center Garrett Bradbury was backpedaling almost as fast as Cousins, making it impossible for the quarterback to step up to throw.

I’m not one to blame the coach, but in this case we’re faced with this situation. Mike Zimmer is known as a “defensive genius.” He admitted that this was the worst defense he has ever had. If the Vikings are not getting even barely adequate defense from their defense-minded coach, why keep him? He has also been coach long past the NFL-standard sell-buy date. A new coach and a new approach are needed, especially if the Vikings are to be saddled with the immobile, unimaginative Cousins as quarterback for the next few years.

Super Bowl and Tricks

On 4th and 1 inside the 49er 5-yard line, the Chiefs lined up with four men in the backfield, with the quarterback under center. Then, on cue, all four pirouetted(!) like synchronized swimmers and moved one step to the right. The ensuing snap then bypassed the quarterback and went directly to one of the running backs, who charged directly ahead for a first down, almost breaking the goal line. I heard this morning on ESPN that the Chiefs borrowed this maneuver from the University of Michigan’s 1948 Rose Bowl victory, although a clip showed the shift but not the pirouette. What effect the spin had on the defense, or the success of the play, I don’t know, but it sure was fun to see and must have been a kick to practice.

My second thought was that in years of watching the Minnesota Vikings, I have never seen such flamboyant trickery. There were also numerous reverses, flips, option runs and other creative plays more imaginative than anything done by the Vikings. Maybe it’s the nature of their stolid, Midwestern division: Chicago, Detroit and Green Bay tend to play straightforward football without the multidimensional quarterbacks rising elsewhere in the NFL. I recently watched a 15-minute YouTube video of Trick Plays in the NFL: fake field goals and punts, halfback passes, the Philly Special, etc. Conspicuously absent were the Vikings.

2019 Vikings

The best player for the Vikings today was their punter, Brad Colquitt, which says pretty much what you need to know about their 27-10 playoff loss to the 49ers. Their ground game was literally nonexistent, their trademark screen passes often lost yardage, and Kirk Cousins didn’t have the time to mount a downfield passing attack. The defense fought but simply wore down: not only were they only six days and two plane rides away from an overtime game in New Orleans, but the Vikings’ offense, with seven three-and-outs, gave them no rest. The game actually wasn’t as close as the score. The Vikings touchdown came on an underthrown pass to Stefon Diggs that was almost as freaky as the Minnesota Miracle of two years ago, and their field goal resulted from a sparkling interception by Erin Hendricks, not any movement by the offense. Meanwhile, the 49ers were content to milk the clock by running on every play in the second half. No doubt they could have easily scored 40+ points if there had been any need.

In recent years and maybe more, the Vikings offensive line has been unable to protect the quarterback. The need is obvious, and every year the pundits plead for the Vikings to use a top draft pick to get a left tackle. Maybe it’s not as easy to find offensive linemen in college as the more glamorous, and visible, skill position players. The Vikings have also traded for offensive tackles, without notable success. For whatever reason, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Vikings quarterback drop back in the pocket, calmly survey the field and pick out his target the way the other three quarterbacks on TV today were able to do. If Cousins doesn’t release the ball as soon as he gets set, he will be in trouble, and he is not very good at eluding rushers. In the penultimate regular season game against the Packers and against San Francisco today, the defense seemed to swarm Cousins at will whenever they needed to.

Nevertheless, we can be grateful for the Vikings’ season, when you consider that ten other NFC teams didn’t make the playoffs at all. There wasn’t, however, a signature win: none of the Vikings’ 10 wins came against a team that ended the season over .500. When they beat the Cowboys in Dallas it seemed like a big deal, until we realized how bad the Cowboys were. I would’ve like a win over Chicago in the season finale – an 11-5 record sounds better than 10-6 – and the Vikings’ second-stringers came within a blown 4th-down coverage of doing that.  The end-of-season losses, though, made the wild-card playoff win over the Saints even more preposterous, and that win, by itself, made the season worthwhile.

Super Bowl 2017

Woody Hayes famously disparaged the forward pass because “three things can happen, and two of them are bad” – i.e., incompletion or interception. After the Atlanta Falcons’ stunning collapse before the New England Patriots, their coach Dan Quinn might want to add three more reasons not to pass: 1) a sack and 2) a holding penalty back-to-back knocked the Falcons out of field goal range with five minutes to play, holding an 8-point lead that would have been insurmountable had they run two plays for no yardage and then converted a 36-yard field goal. On their prior possession, 3) a strip sack on a second-and-1 play gave the Pats the ball and good field position to reduce their 16-point deficit to 8.
The strip sack not only led to a Patriots touchdown, it inexorably signaled a total shift in game momentum. New England had indeed started a comeback of sorts by holding Atlanta to three-and-out on their initial second-half possession; and after Atlanta scored its fourth, and last, touchdown the Patriots answered. But when their PAT attempt bounced the wrong way off the goal post, you still had the feeling that this was not New England’s day. Their next drive produced only a field goal, leaving the deficit at 16, with the fourth quarter melting away. The strip sack changed all that; and for anyone who thinks “momentum” is little more than a sportswriter’s fiction, this Super Bowl’s second half should convince otherwise.
It is easy to second-guess the Falcons’ play-calling: dialing up a long pass when a routine run would have netted a first down exposed quarterback Matt Ryan to the Patriot rush that produced the strip sack; and once the Falcons advanced to the New England 22 surely a conservative approach that ensured a field goal was called for, especially as Atlanta’s passing attack was sputtering and it took a sensational catch by Julio Jones to get there. The irony is that play-calling was the responsibility of Kyle Shanahan, the lauded offensive coordinator who was on the verge of moving to San Francisco as head coach. Not a good exit.
Most, if not all, of the credit for New England’s remarkable comeback is going to Tom Brady, hailed as the greatest quarterback, and maybe football player, of all time (the “GOAT”). There is no way to measure the psychological impact of his leadership, but I would point out that his physical performance was well short of impeccable. In the first half he threw an interception that was returned 82 yards for a seemingly crushing touchdown. Several long passes missed open receivers, and most of his completions were short- or mid-range. At least two of his passes on crucial fourth-quarter drives could have been intercepted, including a fade route in the end zone and the pass over the middle that Julian Edelman made the miracle catch on, after it bounced off defenders’ hands and legs.
At the same time, he received remarkable contributions from numerous teammates. Unheralded running back James White not only scored 20 points (a record) but was almost never brought down by the first defender he encountered. Brady’s offensive line firmed up in the second half – in contrast to Ryan’s – giving him time when one sack would’ve ended the comeback. His receivers, shaky in the first half, caught everything in the second. And the biggest plays, as mentioned above, came from the defense, stripping and sacking Ryan. Without Dont’a Hightower, et al., Brady wouldn’t have had the ball.
Last, but not least, is Lady Luck. The Falcons never saw the ball in overtime because the coin toss came up ‘heads,’ and the Patriots, for two years, have never called anything but.