Football Archives - Page 23 of 41

NFL Week 17 Good Cop, Bad Cop Precaps

The NFL season has started but how do you know which games to watch and which to skip? Ask our favorite police duo with their good cop, bad cop precaps of all the matchups in the National Football League this weekend. To see which games will be televised in your area, check out 506sports.com’s essential NFL maps.

Week 17

Sunday, December 28, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Buffalo Bills at New England Patriots

Good cop: The Bills can almost make up for their terrible loss last week that kicked them out of playoff contention by finishing the season with a win in New England!

Bad cop: The Patriots have already clinched home-field advantage throughout the entire playoffs. They don’t need to win this game at all. Knowing Bill Bellichick, they might just spend the game practicing some very avante-garde offensive strategy, just in case.

Cleveland Browns at Baltimore Ravens

Good cop: The Ravens will make the playoffs if they win this game and San Diego loses to Kansas City!

Bad cop: The Browns will make the playoffs when California falls into the ocean.

Chicago Bears at Minnesota Vikings

Good cop: Of all the meaningless (to playoff qualification or seeding) Week 17 games, this could be the best! It’s two rival teams that are going in opposite directions!

Bad cop: Yes… Minnesota is struggling to climb out of the dumpster while Chicago is hanging out in the landfill…

Dallas Cowboys at Washington Redskins

Good cop: Washington eliminated one divisional rival, the Philadelphia Eagles, last week! This week they have a chance to keep a first round playoff bye away from another divisional rival, the Dallas Cowboys, if they can win this game!

Bad cop: If there’s anything Washington D.C. is good at, it’s ruining the hopes of people throughout the country. Ha.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Houston Texans

Good cop: The Texans are the longest of long shots to make the playoffs — they have to win and they need the Ravens and Chargers to lose! But they also have the easiest opponent this week! The Jaguars are not good and that’s good for the Houston Texans!

Bad cop: I love how you just managed to say a team was bad, something you’re normally loath to admit, but you still found a way to make that a good thing. The Jaguars are bad and the Texans are not really that much better. They don’t deserve a playoff spot and they won’t get one.

Indianapolis Colts at Tennessee Titans

Good cop: I’m fascinated by this game! Who better for the struggling, yet playoff bound Colts to play than the 2-13 Titans?

Bad cop: Beating a team whose incentives are all lined up for losing won’t prove anything positive about the Colts.

San Diego Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs

Good cop: This is virtually a playoff game! Both teams need to win this game to make the playoffs! The Chargers could get in even if they lose, but if the Chiefs lose, they are out!

Bad cop: Too bad that Chiefs starting quarterback, Alex Smith, is out with a lacerated spleen. It takes a little of the drama away from this game.

New York Jets at Miami Dolphins

Good cop: The Jets have been an entertaining mess for years under head-coach Rex Ryan! This might be the last game of an era!

Bad cop: An era defined by dysfunction and mediocrity? Oh, I can’t wait to watch one last game in THAT era.

New Orleans Saints at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Good cop: These two teams have had disappointing seasons but they’ll look to close the year out with a win!

Bad cop: Your lack of cynicism drives me crazy. You think the Buccaneers don’t know they might get the first pick of next year’s draft if they lose? They know.

Philadelphia Eagles at New York Giants

Good cop: Grudge match!

Bad cop: Consolation match.

SUNDAY, December 28, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

Carolina Panthers at Atlanta Falcons

Good cop: This game is for all the marbles in the NFC South! Win and you make the playoffs! Lose and you go home!

Bad cop: Dramatic and ultimately futile. Winning a division and making the playoffs with a losing record is a damn shame.

Oakland Raiders at Denver Broncos

Good cop: This may seem like a meaningless game, but it’s not! The Broncos can clinch a bye week with a win and there’s no player who would appreciate a week off more than 38 year-old Peyton Manning!

Bad cop: And no team easier to beat than the Oakland Raiders.

Detroit Lions at Green Bay Packers

Good cop: Both teams have clinched a playoff spot but now they play each other for the NFC North division title and playoff positioning!

Bad cop: It’s hard, even for me, to find something bad to say about this game. It’ll probably stink.

Arizona Cardinals at San Francisco 49ers

Good cop: Down to their third quarterback, the Cardinals are the most compelling playoff team! I can’t wait to see if they can overcome their quarterback play to make a deep run this year!

Bad cop: I can save you the suspense. They won’t.

St. Louis Rams at Seattle Seahawks

Good cop: It’s such a shame that the Rams are stuck in a division with the Seahawks, Cardinals, and (not this year but for the last few years) the 49ers! Otherwise, they’d probably be a playoff team! They’re not bad!

Bad cop: “They’re not bad.” Heck of a rallying cry.

SUNDAY, December 21, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Cincinnati Bengals at Pittsburgh Steelers

Good cop: The AFC North division, with the Bengals, Steelers, Ravens, and Browns, has been the best division from 1-4 all season! This game will finally decide who the winner is!

Bad cop: Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t really matter though. Both teams are in the playoffs for sure and neither one are likely to get a first round bye.

Old media covers sports in old age

Snarky headline aside, the New York Times and Associated Press really has been on a roll lately with their sports coverage of the elderly. Two recent articles celebrating people whose unique perspective on sports is only partially due to their long experience on our planet. My suspicion is that these two characters would have been interesting subjects for profiles twenty years ago, forty years ago, even seventy five years ago!

A Hole in One for a 103-Year-Old Golfer

by The Associated Press in the New York Times

Gus Andreone, an 103 year-old resident of Sarasota, Florida, recently became the oldest person to hit a hole in one. Two things popped out to me in this short profile. First, in hitting a hole in one, Andreone took the record away from its previous owner, an 102 year old woman. I’d like to know what her story was! Second, I love that Andreone claims to have hit eight holes in one since 1939 and that he seems to fully expect to hit another in his life. Let’s hope he does!

He said he used a driver on the 113-yard 14th hole of the Lakes Course, like he normally does, but then noticed something different. The ball hit the ground about 30 yards from the green and then rolled into the hole, he said.

His golf partners jumped up and down, but Andreone kept his cool.

“I can’t say that I felt any different about one or the other,” he said of his most recent ace. “I just felt another hole in one.”

At 107, a Buffalo Bills Fan Who Sees It All

by Andrea Elliott for the New York Times

There’s so much to love about this profile of Evelyn Elliott, a 107 year old Buffalo Bills fan. It was written by her granddaughter, Andrea Elliott, and Elliott’s love and familiar granddaughterly bemusement come through brilliantly in her writing. Evelyn Elliott, the subject of the piece, is an inspiring woman. Although her first date with the man who eventually became her husband was to a football game, it wasn’t until after he became sick, six months before his death, (and 65 years after their first football date,) that she got into football. Since then, she has been a true fan of the Buffalo Bills and nothing in this article suggests that will change any time soon. The Bills were eliminated from the playoffs last weekend, after this article came out, and I’m sure Elliott is disappointed but I’m equally sure that she will be in her living room to watch them finish out the year against the New England Patriots this coming Sunday. She’s a true fan!

I kept trying to discern what it was about the game that captivated Grandma’s mind. I knew she paid close attention to strategy.

“What do you think happens in the huddle?” I tried.

“They decide what to do,” she sniffed (in the tone of “Are you an idiot or what?”).

I have interviewed militant jihadists, prosecutors, drug dealers and counterterrorism specialists at the Central Intelligence Agency. None of them prepared me for the challenge of extracting personal information from my grandmother.

At the beginning of the third quarter last Sunday, with the score tied, 10-10, I started up with my questions again. She frowned.

“I can’t concentrate when people talk,” she snapped.

Grandma’s spectator style might best be described as Zen. She watches the game closely and calmly, getting neither flustered nor excited. This disposition mirrors her general approach to life.

“I just go with it,” she likes to say. “I take it as it comes. Let the best man win.”

Making the playoffs with a losing record: worth it? fair? Part 2

Now that we’re almost at the end of the NFL regular season, there are a few things we know for sure. One of those things is that the winner of the NFC South division, a team guaranteed to make the playoffs, is going to have a losing record. That they will make the playoffs having won only half their games or fewer can be seen in a trillion different ways, from luck to fair to an abomination. I reached out to my old friend and sometimes collaborator, Dean Russell Bell, to find out what he thought about this. What follows is our unadulterated but safe for work (at least it’s safe if your job doesn’t mind you reading about the NFL in the office) email exchange. This is part two of a two-part journey. If you didn’t read part one, you can find it here.

Ezra,

Let me first say how happy I am that a site like Muthead exists SOLELY to provide information on Madden player ratings. Is this a great sports country or what?

That’s a lot of numbers. And a somewhat limited sample size and one that’s reliant on…you know…video game ratings (which are based on stats, yeah yeah yeah. Still. Really?) It also doesn’t include relative salary cap impact of picks in those slots (which, I’ll admit, I’m not entirely clear on) which would be the other thing to take into consideration. And I won’t point out that four of the six teams with a great pick in the 10-14 slot are likely to miss the playoffs this year. Or maybe I will.

But to me, that all misses the point. If I’m a fan – maybe not the die-hardiest of die-hard fans who actually analyze their teams’ salary caps – I’ll still take the playoff game. Again – are you more likely to get a better player with a higher draft pick? Yes. But this is not the top five, where you get the “can’t miss” franchise quarterback (even though they frequently miss). So as a fan…I’m not as moved by it. I’m more about the short term excitement.

And if I’m a franchise, you have to take that into consideration. No coach wants to miss the playoffs. Tanking does not seem to be a thing in football like it is in basketball. Why is that? I don’t really know…but I suspect it has something to do with how big a crapshoot it all is.

BUT. I will not let all these numbers and colors distract from the fundamental question: is it fair for a team with a worse record to make the playoffs because they won a division?

Dean

— — —

Dean,

Fairness in sports is something I have a lot of trouble thinking about. Yes, it’s fair because in the constructed universe of the NFL, the rules dictate that the 32 teams are broken up into two conferences of 16 teams each and the conferences are broken up into four divisions of four teams each and the team with the best record in each division is guaranteed a playoff spot. Whichever team wins the NFC South, the Saints, Panthers, or Falcons, did not do anything untoward (at least not that we know of) or outside of the rules as they are today. The question is, is the rule fair? That’s when things start to get very scrambly in my head but let me try to make some kind of sense out of them… or at least an omelet.

If fair means optimized to reward the best teams, then it’s safe to say this is not a “fair” rule. You could easily design a fairer system by this definition of the word fair by eliminating divisions or even conferences entirely. Why not just have the top 12 of the 32 teams make the playoffs? Divisions, and even conferences, exist for reasons other than rewarding the best teams. Divisions exist mostly for fans. Having three teams that your team plays twice a year (as they do within divisions) helps create the type of contentious long-term rivalries that fans love like the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers, the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Seattle Seahawks, and virtually every combination of the teams in the NFC East, the Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, and Washington Redskins. Divisions are definitely not fair if fair means optimizing to reward the best teams, but they might be fair if fair means creating the most enjoyable product for fans of all 32 teams.

If fairness in sports is about serving the fans, then I would argue that this does serve the fans. Oh, sure, fans of the team that misses out on the playoffs despite having ten wins will be pissed, but overall, I think it’s a good thing. If playoff spots were given out simply to the best 12 teams in the league, the playoff race would basically only include the teams in ninth through fifteenth place overall — say around seven teams. By rewarding division winners and thus limiting the playoff spots given to non-division winning good teams, the NFL increases the number of teams in contention for the playoffs (and at risk for falling out). In a world without divisions, the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and Seattle Seahawks wouldn’t care so much about their final two games of the season as they do today. They would be in fourth, fifth, and eighth place respectively and comfortably in the playoffs. But because divisions matter, each of these teams could miss out on a playoff spot if they don’t win. Similarly, in a world without divisions, we wouldn’t care so much about games involving the three teams fighting for the NFC South title — the Falcons, Saints, and Panthers would be in 21st, 23rd, and 24th place and well out of the playoff hunt.

The NFL’s division based playoff system is fair if you consider the NFL to be first and foremost entertainment for fans. That’s good enough for me. What about you?

Ezra

— — —

Ezra,

Good enough for me too, even though I’m going to watch some under-.500 NFC South take a playoff spot that could’ve belonged to my swan-diving Eagles. Because the NFL should, first and foremost, satisfy the fans. We’re the ones who pay for the whole thing.

Now, it would be unfair if winning a division was the only way to make it into the playoffs – but every team has an equal opportunity to win one of the wild cards and, in the case of my Eagles, that was very much within their grasp. The didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs. And they’re not. So that’s fair. And as you note, the current arrangement made this week of football far more entertaining than it would otherwise have been.

The other question is whether it’s fair that a division winner automatically gets homefield advantage in the first playoff game despite having a worse record than their opponent. And again – I think it is. The NFL has decided – for the reasons you cited – to give preferential to teams that win their division. While some divisions may be more talented overall in a given year, I’d argue that it the balance of power shifts often enough that it roughly evens out. After all, it was only a few years ago – before Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, and Chuck Arians – that we were talking about how anemic the NFC West was, especially compared to the powerhouse NFC South.

Dean

— — —

We decided to leave it here. What comes around, goes around. Everything has happened before and will happen again. And more cliches. Until the next time, have a happy and safe holiday season!

2015 in the United States of Sports: Calendar View

Last week, I released my little piece of annual sports data art work, a map showing the biggest sporting event in each of the 50 states. It was fun and painstaking to create. Some states, like Arizona where the Super Bowl is located in 2015, were easy to figure out. Some states, like my home state of New Jersey, which didn’t seem to be hosting any big sporting events in 2015, were much more difficult. The map itself was a delicate balance between too much data and not enough. I felt I had to get the name of the event and its starting date into the map. To keep those items legibly, I sacrificed the names of the states. We all know where Montana, Missouri, and Mississippi are, right? No? Yeah, me neither. So, to help out with deciphering the map and to add to the map experience, here is a list of all the top sporting events of 2015 sorted by date. The year starts with three big games on January 1, college football’s tradition heavy Rose Bowl in California and Sugar Bowl in Louisiana plus the National Hockey League’s biggest exhibition, the Winter Classic, this year in Washington D.C.

I’m going to keep adding to this map until the end of the year. To keep track of all the updates to the map, bookmark this page or follow the blog.

If you’d like a copy of the map, sign up for our email list and I will send you either a link to download a high quality .pdf or mail an actual physical copy to your home or office! If you’re already a subscriber and want a map, send me an email to dearsportsfan@gmail.com.

Sign up for the Dear Sports Fan email list:

Week 16 NFL One Liners

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by Google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

Week 16

Saturday, December 20, at 4:30 p.m. ET

Philadelphia Eagles 24, at Washington Redskins 27

All the Eagles had to do to keep themselves in the playoff hunt and put the pressure on their rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, was beat the dysfunctional 3-11 Washington Redskins. Could they? No.
Line: Heartbreak in Philadelphia; confusion in Washington D.C.

Saturday, December 20, at 8:30 p.m. ET

San Diego Chargers 38, at San Francisco 49ers 35

Down 28-7 at halftime, the San Diego Chargers came all the way back in the second half to force overtime and eventually win the game. This win knocked San Francisco officially out of the playoffs and launched the Chargers into a wildcard spot.
Line: That Saturday night game was exciting and important!

Sunday, December 21, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Baltimore Ravens 13, at Houston Texans 25

Ravens fans had to feel like they had won the lottery before this game because they knew their defense would be facing the seemingly exploitable Texans quarterback, Case Keenum, who was winless in eight starts last year. Now they’ve got to be stunned and disappointed after their team was the one that got exploited.
Line: Case was on the case. (Or some other horrible “case” pun.)

Cleveland Browns 13, at Carolina Panthers 17

Playing quarterback in the NFL is a tough job, even for tough people. Browns quarterback, Johnny Manziel, found that out the hard way after he was knocked out of the game early on with a hamstring injury. Panthers quarterback, Cam Newton, already knows the deal — he played two weeks after suffering broken bones in his back during a car accident.
Line: The Panthers are somehow favored to make the playoffs despite a record of six wins, eight losses, and one tie.

Detroit Lions 30, at Chicago Bears 14

Sometimes a team that has absolutely no hope is the dangerous kind of team to play against. That team in this game was the Chicago Bears who benched their franchise quarterback, Jay Cutler, and played better than they have in weeks but not quite well enough to beat the Lions.
Line: The Bears made Jay Cutler look like he was part of the problem by playing well in this game.

Green Bay Packers 20, at Tampa Bay Buccaneers 3

The story of this game was the several fans who were hospitalized after the game because they had been struck by lightening!
Line: Getting hit by lightening is incredibly unlikely, but not as unlikely as it would have been for Tampa Bay to beat the Packers.

Kansas City Chiefs 12, at Pittsburgh Steelers 20

The Steelers guaranteed themselves a playoff spot with this win and the Chiefs guaranteed themselves another week of angst before almost definitely missing out on the playoffs themselves.
Line: The Steelers are quietly becoming a popular team to talk about as having a shot to make it to the Super Bowl.

Minnesota Vikings 35, at Miami Dolphins 37

The future seems bright for both these teams after a back and forth offensive game ended with the Dolphins ahead but only barely on the scoreboard.
Line: If I were a Vikings or a Dolphins fan, I think I’d be reasonably happy with my team this year.

New England Patriots 17, at New York Jets 16

I wouldn’t put it past Patriots coach, Bill Bellichick, to have instructed his team to troll their rivals, the Jets, by making them think they had a chance to win, only to steal it away from them. That said, I think the Jets just get excited to play the Patriots and play much better against them than any other team.
Line: What, you didn’t think the Patriots were actually going to lose to the Jets, did you?

Atlanta Falcons 30, at New Orleans Saints 14

The Falcons’ victory over the Saints eliminates the Saints from playoff contention, gives the Falcons a chance to make the playoffs if they win their next game, and guarantees that the winner of their division will have a losing record.
Line: What a travesty. Also… it’s pretty exciting!

SUNDAY, December 14, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

New York Giants 37, at St. Louis Rams 27

Odell Beckham Jr., a wide receiver on the Giants, is having one of the best debut seasons of anyone, football player or not, in recent memory. He also absolutely crushed my friend Alex in our fantasy football league’s championship game.
Line: Odell Beckham Jr. is the truth.

Buffalo Bills 24, at Oakland Raiders 26

Don’t cry for me, Buffalo. I don’t actually know what that reference means, but it seems like it would be either appropriate or ironic for fans of the Buffalo Bills. The Bills were expected to beat the Raiders, who are among the worst five teams in the league, to stay in the playoff hunt, but they couldn’t get it done.
Line: Oh Buffalo, so sad!

Indianapolis Colts 7, at Dallas Cowboys 42

Sometimes the story of a game can be predicted, almost before the game, from the relative need of each team to win. The Cowboys needed to win to guarantee their spot in the playoffs. The Colts couldn’t change their playoff positioning with a win at all. Q.E.D., the Cowboys won.
Line: It’s hard to win a game if you don’t need to.

SUNDAY, December 21, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Seattle Seahawks 35, at Arizona Cardinals 6

The Cardinals proved that, no matter how valiantly you try, you can’t beat a good team without even a half-decent quarterback. It’s lucky for the Cardinals that they’ve already clinched a playoff spot and hopefully their second string quarterback will be healthy by then. Meanwhile, the Seahawks look unbeatable, just like last year.
Line: This game showed why there were rumors last week about Kurt Warner coming out of his five years of retirement to play quarterback for the Cardinals.

NFL Week 16 Good Cop, Bad Cop Precaps

Week 16

Saturday, December 20, at 4:30 p.m. ET

Philadelphia Eagles at Washington Redskins

Good cop: NFL football on Saturday! How could it get any better than that!??

Bad cop: How? If it was up to me, I’d start by banishing the terrible, no-fun to watch Redskins.

Saturday, December 20, at 8:30 p.m. ET

San Diego Chargers at San Francisco 49ers

Good cop: The Chargers have to win this game to stay in the playoff hunt! Phillip Rivers is going to come out firing!

Bad cop: When is Phillip Rivers not firing? He’s a quarterback, he throws the ball a lot. These teams have combined to win one out of their last six games. Not exactly what I want to do with my Saturday night.

Sunday, December 21, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans

Good cop: I know I sound like a broken record, but this game is basically a playoff game! Both teams need to win to give themselves a chance at the playoffs!

Bad cop: No… it may be as single elimination as a playoff game but part of what makes playoff games fun is that they involve playoff teams. You know, like good teams… unlike this game.

Cleveland Browns at Carolina Panthers

Good cop: Will Cam Newton return two weeks after a serious car accident to help his Panthers drive to the playoffs?

Bad cop: I’m assuming that pun was unintended. Yes, Newton will play, no, even winning won’t give his team more than a fig-ment of a chance. Hahahaha.

Detroit Lions at Chicago Bears

Good cop: This game always makes me want to say, “oh my!” Never more than this week with the Lions in a tight race for the division lead with the Green Bay Packers!

Bad cop: Have you heard that the Bears are benching their quarterback, Jay Cutler, for this game? That’s the worst last ditch attempt I’ve ever seen of a coach to keep his job. Not going to work.

Green Bay Packers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Good cop: I! Uh! This! Um! Well, the Packers need to win this game! It’s important to them!

Bad cop: Oh, they’ll win the game. We just shouldn’t be forced to watch it.

Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers

Good cop: This is another one of those games that’s basically a playoff game! And this one, even you can’t argue against this, has two really exciting, competitive football teams!

Bad cop: They can be exciting and competitive or they can just fold like a tent. These teams are in the position they’re in because they’ve lost to Buccaneers, Browns, Jets, Titans, and Raiders. They don’t deserve to make the playoffs.

Minnesota Vikings at Miami Dolphins

Good cop: This game is all about the future! Both teams are led by young quarterbacks and are using this season as a launch pad for serious playoff runs next year!

Bad cop: It’s about the future? In that case, where is my jet pack?

New England Patriots at New York Jets

Good cop: Smart move by the NFL schedulers to put a fierce divisional rivalry like this at the end of the season! Even though the game doesn’t mean anything for making the playoffs, the Jets vs. Patriots games are always good!

Bad cop: In this case though, the Jets have an incentive to lose to get back into the hunt for the first overall draft pick next year. They should lose anyway but this consideration makes it so they really should lose.

Atlanta Falcons at New Orleans Saints

Good cop: Matt Ryan leads his high-flying Falcons into New Orleans still controlling their own playoff destiny with games against the two other teams contending for the NFC South title in the final two weeks of the season!

Bad cop: THEY ARE ALL BELOW .500. HOW CAN YOU GET EXCITED FOR THAT?

SUNDAY, December 14, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

New York Giants at St. Louis Rams

Good cop: With recent wins, these two teams have pulled themselves up out of the NFL cellar by their own bootstraps! They’re playing hard for their coaches and their jobs and that’s always worth watching!

Bad cop: Oh, I guess it’s worth watching. I prefer teams that are either great or pathetic. Mediocre doesn’t really do it for me.

Buffalo Bills at Oakland Raiders

Good cop: The Bills get rewarded for their season saving victory over the Packers last week with a sweet trip to Oakland! Take care of business there and they’ll put themselves in a better position to make the playoffs.

Bad cop: Not a good one though. They have the worst tie-breakers of the nine teams in their conference with eight or more wins.

Indianapolis Colts at Dallas Cowboys

Good cop: Bright lights and big stars in this game with Andrew Luck sauntering into Dallas to play against Tony Romo, Dez Bryant, and DeMarco Murray!

Bad cop: For the last time, offenses don’t play against each other. Gah. These are the two most overblown and overrated teams in the league. Have fun with them before they go out in the first round of the playoffs.

SUNDAY, December 21, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals

Good cop: The Cardinals clinched a playoff spot last weekend but they’re very much a team in the process of adjusting and evolving! For the third time this year, they have to integrate a new starting quarterback!

Bad cop: Ryan Lindley against the Seattle Defense? Ouch.

MONDAY, December 22, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Denver Broncos at Cincinnati Bengals

Good cop: A primetime meeting of two playoff teams! It’s got talent and intrigue! Is Peyton Manning injured?

Bad cop: Is Andy Dalton still a starting quarterback in the NFL? Why?

2015 in the United States of Sports

With the new year approaching, I wanted to do something to celebrate the last year and look forward to 2015 with you all.

2014 has been an enormous year in sports and also for Dear Sports Fan. The year began with the NFL playoffs and a decisive Super Bowl win by the deserving Seattle Seahawks. The day after the big game, I took a train to John F. Kennedy airport, where I, like almost everyone who had been to the Super Bowl in New Jersey, waited while our planes were delayed by a snow storm. It was actually a pretty funny sight. All the gates to the Denver area were full of depressed people wearing orange and the gates to the West Coast were packed full of hung-over but happy fans wearing neon green. I flew off to Barcelona where I eventually and slowly made my way over to Russia for the 2014 Winter Olympics. In Russia, I got the chance to watch a bunch of men’s and women’s ice hockey plus some speed skating, curling, and cross-country skiing. It was all good, even when the United States lost to Canada 1-0 in the semifinals of the men’s Ice Hockey. Just a few months later, the nation’s imagination was captured by the most exciting World Cup in my memory. The United States Men’s National team did the country proud, more by generating bizarrely exciting soccer games than by winning, but still. The United States found itself in the throes of a soccer passion that mimicked, if not met the rest of the world’s normal experience. The summer was notable in the sports world for LeBron James deciding to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, a tectonic shift in the power dynamics of the NBA. For Dear Sports Fan, and for myself, the biggest move of the summer was my decision to leave my job of seven and a half years and throw myself into working on Dear Sports Fan full-time. Since then it’s been a roller-coaster ride. The Kansas City Royals rode their way, bunting and bunting some more, to the World Series before falling to the San Francisco Giants. The focus of the NFL season blurred when off-season issues like domestic abuse, child abuse, institutional idiocy, and the long-term effects of concussions overwhelmed the normal focus on football, fantasy football, and gambling. Like these issues made football seem like an insignificant side-show, so the great cultural issue of police brutality and our legal system’s inability to properly deal with it made sports in general seem like an insignificant side-show.

That’s where we are as we begin to hurtle towards 2015. 2015 is a year of great promise and plentiful sports. To celebrate it with you all, I’ve created a map with the biggest sporting event in each state in 2015 labeled. The events were chosen by me, so your results may vary of course, but I’ll be happy to hear from you with all disputes of import. The events vary in size and national stature, of course. Minnesota may not have anything to match the national profile of Arizona’s Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean their Star of the North Games in June are anything to sneeze at. In fact, with four to six thousand athletes competing in around twenty sports, the Star of the North Games are a massive undertaking. The sports range from the expected big four of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, to more unusual events like New Jersey’s international Fistball competition and Delaware’s World Championship of Punkin’ Chunkin’ where teams compete to build the best pumpkin throwing machines.

The United States is truly a great sporting nation and 2015’s sports will truly range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy them all year with a copy of Dear Sports Fan’s 2015 in the United States of Sports map. If you’d like a copy of the map, sign up for our email list and I will send you either a link to download a high quality .pdf or mail an actual physical copy to your home or office! If you’re already a subscriber and want a map, send me an email to dearsportsfan@gmail.com.

Sign up for the Dear Sports Fan email list:

Thanks for the support,
Ezra Fischer

Making the playoffs with a losing record: worth it? fair?

Now that we’re almost at the end of the NFL regular season, there are a few things we know for sure. One of those things is that the winner of the NFC South division, a team guaranteed to make the playoffs, is going to be no better than 8-8. That they will make the playoffs having won only half their games or fewer can be seen in a trillion different ways, from luck to fair to an abomination. I reached out to my old friend and sometimes collaborator, Dean Russell Bell, to find out what he thought about this. What follows is our unadulterated but safe for work (at least it’s safe if your job doesn’t mind you reading about the NFL in the office) email exchange. This is part one of what I think will be a two-part journey. You can find part two here.

Dean,

A lot of people are talking about how unfair the NFL rule that calls for every division champion to get a top four spot in the playoffs is, particularly now that it’s a lock that the winner of the NFC South division can be no better than 8-8. In some ways, this is obviously not fair. Some ten win team is going to miss out on the playoffs despite being better than the winner of the NFC South. As a division winner (but obviously not one in the top two teams) the winner of the NFC South will host a playoff game against a wild-card team with at least two more wins than them. That feels unfair both from a competitive standpoint and a financial one, since home playoff games are like gold mines.

All that said, I think I found one way that the NFL rules got it right and where it actually will hurt the team that stumbles into the NFC South title: the draft. NFL draft order rules call for the first 20 picks in the draft to be assigned to all non-playoff teams in reverse order of their record with ties broken by opponent’s strength of schedule and then division and conference tiebreakers. As a 8-8 or more likely a 7-9 team, the NFC South winner would, if they didn’t get a playoff spot, be somewhere around pick 10-14 by my estimate. Assuming they lose in the first round of the playoffs, they would get the 21 pick of the draft.

My question for you is, is that worth it? And what criteria would you use to think about that question? And how do you think fans of the teams in question, the New Orleans Saints, Carolina Panthers, and Atlanta Falcons feel about it?

Ezra

— — —

Ezra

It’s an interesting question – one that, to me, comes down to three crapshoots: the NFL draft, the NFL regular season, and the NFL playoffs.

A team may be punished for making the playoffs by falling in the draft – and there is clearly a marginal benefit in choosing somewhere from 7-11 spots higher in the draft. But I don’t believe that is a significant punishment given how big a crapshoot the NFL draft is. There are so few sure things and so few teams that draft successfully on a regular basis that I just don’t think that kind of drop matters.

The second crapshoot is the NFL regular season. Because of the nature of football – only sixteen games and a high likelihood of injuries – there are very, very few teams guaranteed to make the playoffs every year. Which means, to me, you embrace every opportunity you can.

Especially because of the NFL playoffs, where literally anything can happen. There’s a 95% chance that the NFC South champ will lose in the first round, even though they play at home. But…what if a team struggles all season and really heats up at the end? What if a team has a rash of injuries early on, then recovers late? What if the favorites in the conference sustain major injuries in the playoffs – or what if that goofy, oblong ball takes an insane bounce, as it does so often?

In baseball, hockey, basketball, the playoffs are usually composed of seven game series’, where the opportunity for that kind of flukiness cancels out. With the NFL playoffs, it’s one and done. Anything can happen.

I’d say it is always, always, always worth it to make the playoffs, even at the expense of falling a few slots in the draft. If I put my Eagles in that scenario, I would definitely want them to make it. Worry about the draft later.

So – to the question you asked me – are these teams paying an adequate price for making the playoffs with a horrible record – the answer is no.

Dean

— — —

Dean,

I’m not so sure I agree with you that the price being exacted from whichever team sneaks into the playoffs with a losing is small. Here’s something I just hacked together in a little internet dork-fest I had with myself to try to quantify the penalty. Here’s a chart that shows how good the players picked between 10-14 and 19-23 over the past five years are as defined by their Madden 15 rankings.

How significant is the drop in the NFL draft from picks 10-14 to 19-23?

Source data is from Wikipedia for draft record and Muthead for Madden 15 player ratings.

Like you said, there’s a lot of uncertainty involved in the NFL draft. Whether it’s luck, skill, or something supernatural, it is totally possible to end up drafting a bust in slots 10-14, like poor Blaine Gabbert, or a find a great player in spots 19-23. That said, there is a real difference between those two general areas in the draft, no matter how you look at it. If you judge by average rating, there is a big difference in two years, a significant one in another year, and it was a wash in two. If you want to just look at the most significant players drafted — the enormous booms or busts, it seems like you’re roughly twice as likely to get a great player at 10-14 than 19-23 and three times more likely to get a bust in the bottom bracket. The difference between a 24% chance of getting a J.J. Watt or Odell Beckham and a 12% chance of landing one of those guys is a big deal for any team but especially one that is struggling to accumulate talent, like the Saints, Panthers, and Falcons.

If the goal is to win the Super Bowl, then I think I might prefer doubling my chances of getting a franchise-changing talent in the draft over this year’s slim chance of winning a championship. How slim is it? Vegas Insider lists the Saints, Panthers, and Falcons, as 65-1, 70-1, and 150-1 long-shots respectively. Even if you combine those, that’s only a 3.6% chance.

Still think it’s worth taking a shot at?

Ezra

To be continued soon (here!). Thanks for reading and please feel free to chime in on Facebook, Fancred, Twitter or in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

Do Not Watch This Game: Tennessee Titans at Jacksonville Jaguars

I’ve mostly discontinued my Do Not Watch This Game column. I used to write a weekly column where I featured one game big sports game, which for one reason or another, I thought would be good to skip if you were looking to skip a game. I thought it would be a useful column for people in relationships where one partner is a sports fan and the other isn’t. For the non-sports fan, it provides a suggestion about when it would be good to sneak something else into the schedule or to negotiate a little harder for the television, knowing that the game in question is of dubious value. For the sports fan, it’s a good reminder not to buy the hype surrounding the game which is all too often easy enough to do if you’re not paying attention. I discontinued it as a weekly feature but this week, there’s a game that is so screaming out to be ignored, that I decided to take the Do Not Watch This Game column for an encore spin around the block.

Thursday, 8:25 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Tennessee Titans at Jacksonville Jaguars. It’s on the NFL Network, but do not watch this game!

Look, I’m not going to tell you there’s no drama in this game — there is — but the drama is because both teams have a very strong incentive to lose! The Titans and Jaguars are both 2-12 and locked in a close battle for last place with three other teams: the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are also 2-12 and the New York Jets are 3-13. The last place team is rewarded with the first pick in next year’s NFL draft, the second worst team, the second pick, and so on. The difference between the overall first pick and the fifth is often huge. In next year’s draft, there are really only two great quarterbacks prospects (by far the most important position in football) and one of them, Jameis Winston, poses real character issues after his many off-the-field issues. So, these five teams are fervently devoted to losing as much as they can in the final two weeks of the season to try to snag the first overall pick.

That may make for compelling drama but it’s not great for the prospect of watching a game that pits one of this cohort against another — and that’s just what we have on Thursday night with this game between Tennessee and Jacksonville. These teams are not only bad but they’re not very entertaining either. Last week the Titans didn’t score a touchdown all game… and they were playing the also-bad New York Jets! The Jaguars managed to score 12 points last week, one more than the Titans, but also didn’t score a touchdown. They scored four field goals. On their way to doing that, they managed to allow their quarterback Blake Bortles to be sacked eight times and hit a total of 15 times. That’s not great for his long-term future and it’s not great for his prospects in this game, only four days later. Last week was no aberration either, these teams are used to not scoring many points — the Titans average 16.5 points per game and the Jaguars 15.1. Expect this game to be low scoring as well.

Fantasy Football, particularly this week when most fantasy leagues have their championship games, can make even the dullest of team football games exciting for viewers because of their allegiances to individual players. Honestly though, if you’re starting a player from either of these teams… you’re probably not in the championship game. CBS doesn’t have a single quarterback, wide receiver, or running back from this game ranked in the top twenty at their respective positions.

If I haven’t managed to convince you yet, I will leave you with this: this weekend is not only the last weekend before Christmas, it’s also overflowing with football. There are two NFL games on national television this Saturday: the Philadelphia Eagles at Washington Redskins at 4:30 and the San Diego Chargers at San Francisco 49ers at 8:30. Those are not great games but they’re 1,000 times better than this one. Watch those if you want but do not watch this game between the Titans and Jaguars!

The top ten Christmas or holiday gifts for a sports fan

The Friday after Thanksgiving is infamously the first day of the holiday shopping season. Black Friday, as it’s called, is a time for sales of questionable worth and dangerous hordes of stampeding shoppers. The whole phenomenon is a funny one though, because by and large, the only people I know who actually get their holiday shopping done before the last minute are all people I would classify as being the least likely to riot over reduced-price electronics. Most of my friends are just rounding into shopping form now, with plenty of gifts left to buy before the 25th. Their motto (our motto, I suppose I should say,) is “if you leave it until the last minute, it only takes a minute.” Here are the top ten sports related gifts that I’ve reviewed over the last couple years. All are guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of the sports fan in your life!

Bob Ryan’s Scribe

Bob Ryan is one of the best known and most respected sports writers in the country. He started as an intern at the Boston Globe in 1968 and retired from full-time work there in 2012 after 44 years as a beat writer and columnist. He is a Boston sports writer, through and through — never bothering to adopt the feigned objective neutrality of many journalists in sports. Although he is “retired” now, he remains almost as prolific as he ever has been and this book is proof of that.

Stadium prints

We’re always on the look-out for tasteful ways to represent beloved sports teams in home decor. Items that fit this bill are worth their weight in, well, not gold at current prices, but aluminum at least. They give the sports fan in the household a way to express pride and love while simultaneously giving their family, partner, or housemates a chance to express their own tasteful sense of home propriety. The large selection of colorful stadium prints from City Prints fits the bill on every detail.

30 for 30 sports documentary box set

ESPN and Bill Simmons’ series of sports documentaries, released under the 30 for 30 brand name, have been home to many of the best sports documentaries of the last several years. Their model of targeting filmmakers from outside of the sports media conglomerate and then asking them to work on a subject of their choosing has produced some very interesting pieces. My favorites (Once Brothers, The Two Escobars, and June 17, 1994) from the series are all included in the box set of twelve films.

NBA player art

Baseball is the sport of the trading card but that leaves some very interesting niches for other sports to fill in. Seattle-based illustrator Matthew Hollister decided to create player artwork for every basketball player in the NBA. He displays and sells these funky and attractive prints at his site, EveryPlayerInTheLeague.

The Stanley Cup of popcorn

This gift should be a perennial on every top ten list of gifts ever written. It’s hard to beat the combination of the Stanley Cup, the greatest and most desired trophy in all of sports, with the equally desirable delicious goodness of home-popped popcorn!

Baseballism shirts

The holidays are the perfect time to invest in some stylish, clever baseball apparel for yourself or for the baseball fan in your life. Baseballism is a great place to find baseball apparel that looks and feels good. Their style plays on the traditional aspects of baseball without taking on the conventional and a slightly ugly characteristics of old-school baseball uniforms.

The Blind Side

A best selling book and Hollywood movie, Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side remains a classic and incredibly contemporary. On top of being a touching story and a great tactical history of football, The Blind Side, is an insightful, challenging book about America, one that has incisive insight into this fall’s cultural issues.

Baseball stadium prints

Not only are these minimalist baseball stadium prints by S. Preston great presents but they’re also a good defense against the fan in your life buying a regular sports poster to remember the season by; one that you will not want hung in your living room. A gift of one of these prints says, “I like how big of a fan you are and I support your team” without saying “let’s turn our house into a locker room.”

Rep your school this holiday season

For fans of college sports, December is not just the holiday season, it’s also the time when college football enters into its postseason bowl games and when college basketball starts its regular season in earnest. It’s a great time to pick up something sports related as a gift for yourself or the college sports fan in your life. Here’s a selection of college sports gifts that range the gamut from useful to kitschy.

Sports books for children

How better to pass on the gift of sports than to give a young sports fan a book that will spark their imagination and inspire them? Two of my childhood favorites, Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars by Walter Brooks and Ice Magic by Matt Christopher are joined by three wonderful baseball books, Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates, You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!, and You Never Heard of Willie Mays?! by Jonah Winter.

Bonus: Who’s on first?

Holiday time is classics time in many households. It’s the perfect time to slip back into the wonderful nostalgia and legitimately great entertainment of the mid-twentieth century, back when men were real men, women were real women, and comedians were really funny. Whether it’s an introduction or a reprise for the fiftieth time, watching or listening to Abbott and Costello’s classic Who’s on First comedy bit is a great time. Celebrate the genius of their humor with this selection of Who’s on First memorabilia.