Football Archives - Page 25 of 41

2014 Thanksgiving NFL preview: Seattle Seahawks at San Francisco 49ers

The last of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games this year is between the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers at 8:30 p.m. on NBC. If this game were a Thanksgiving food, it would be the roast pork, baked salmon, or Turducken that someone brings to the meal. It’s not traditional but damn, is it good. Tradition aside, you’re going to grab a few extra servings of it on top of that dried out token piece of Turkey breast you eat out of obligation.

Thanksgiving is the ultimate American holiday. Its focusses are family, food, and football. To celebrate the first two, it helps to know about the third. To that end, we’re offering a free copy of our Guide to Football for the Curious in addition to publishing previews about each of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games.

Plot

Unlike the two day games, this game does not have a set host city and team, so the league is free to pick what they think the most entertaining matchup will be each year. Before this season started, the matchup of the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers must have seemed like a slam dunk. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl last year and the 49ers have been to at least the conference finals (the game right before the Super Bowl) for the last three years. Both teams are in the NFC West division, and if that weren’t enough to create a rivalry, their head coaches, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh share a mutual disdain from their days coaching in college against each other. Before the season started, this game must have seemed like the perfect choice for Thanksgiving night because it was a heated rivalry of two very excellent teams. The schedule makers lucked out — it is a compelling game but for very different reasons than they thought before the season.

The first half of the NFL season for these two teams has proven that something can always go wrong. Both teams have struggled to win games, largely because their dominating defenses from the previous years have been anything but dominating this year. Nor have things been nice and easy in the dressing room. Seattle traded one of its most explosive players mid-season and as he left the city the team’s leadership spread rumors that he was unmanageable and violent towards his teammates. San Francisco has been beset by rumors that their team can’t stand their coach. It’s fairly common in sports for teams to dislike their coaches, but these rumors have suggested that the situation for the 49ers is worse than normal.

On Thanksgiving, both Seattle and San Francisco find themselves 7-4 (seven wins, four losses) and a full two games behind the Arizona Cardinals for the division lead. Assuming neither team can catch Arizona, these two teams will be fighting with each other and a couple of other extremely good teams for the two available wild card playoff spots. Between real animosity for the opponent and a clear need to win the game for playoff positioning, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if this were the best game of the day.

Characters

Jim Harbaugh, Coach of the San Francisco 49ers

Jim Harbaugh is a pain in the ass. That seems to be the consensus of everyone who has every played with or for him. He’s intense, emotional, almost childlike in his inability or unwillingness to control himself on the sidelines. He also wins. A lot. He’s known as a “quarterback whisperer” or someone who is able to mentor young quarterbacks to make the most of their potential. This year has been an interesting one about him, if not for him. His contract ends after this season and it’s unclear whether the 49ers will want to retain him, despite his winning record. There have been well documented reports of power struggles between him and the general manager of the team as well dissension among the players.

Colin Kaepernick, Quarterback on the San Francisco 49ers

Kaepernick is the young, talented quarterback being whispered to by Harbaugh. Kaepernick is an unusual sight on the football field. He is tall and slender but freakishly fast and strong. Once a well-regarded professional prospect as a baseball pitcher, Kaepernick retains an element of foreignness to his game. His arm strength is second to none and when he decides to run with the ball, he’s a threat to run by, around, or over defenders. For all his talent though, he can look as bad at any moment as he looked good during a previous play. He’s not particularly consistent and his decision making is questionable.

Chris Borland, Linebacker on the San Francisco 49ers

For the past three seasons, the San Francisco 49ers football team’s character was epitomized by its two amazing inside linebackers, Patrick Willis and Navorro Bowman. The 49ers were a strong, no nonsense, physical team and those two guys were their team’s leaders, role models, and muse. This year, they are both out with injuries. Who steps in? This guy, Chris Borland. Borland is a rookie who won Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year last year in his Senior season. He was drafted by the 49ers in the third round of the NFL draft. Since stepping into a starting role, he’s been a defensive leader on the team and has quickly become a rising star.

Pete Carroll, Coach of the Seattle Seahawks

Pete Carroll is a charming trickster of a coach. It’s no surprise that of all the coaches in the NFL, he’s the one who became a robber baron in this .gif. He’s a rogue. He left his last college job at USC right before the school was sanctioned seriously by the NCAA for basically flagrantly paying star running back Reggie Bush. Now that he’s in the NFL, Carroll’s team has been among the league leaders in PED or performance enhancing drug suspensions. No matter where he goes though, he wins. Last year, he took the Seahawks all the way to the Super Bowl where they routed the Broncos early and won easily. He and Harbaugh hate each other as they have since they were rivals in college at USC and Stanford.

Marshawn Lynch, Running Back on the Seattle Seahawks

Marshawn Lynch is an extreme running back. He’s known as Beast Mode for his powerful and unyielding running style. If you want to know what I’m talking about, watch this. He also famously loves Skittles. The Seattle fans love him, so now when he scores at home, Skittles rain down from the stands. He has one year left on his contract after this year but is rumored to be leaving Seattle sooner than that. He has not been happy there this year. One of his friends/allies, Percy Harvin was traded during the year, and Lynch has reportedly been misbehaving behind the scenes. Of course, it’s hard to know the truth because the team has an incentive to sell the misbehavior story if they want to get rid of Lynch without their fans going crazy. What we do know is that last week after the game, Lynch decided to stonewall reporters in a half comic, half tragic way.

Russell Wilson, Quarterback on the Seattle Seahawks

Russell Wilson was the toast of the NFL for his first couple years in the league. He came in as a somewhat unheralded rookie and immediately beat out his competition in training camp so thoroughly that he was given the starting job. He didn’t disappoint. In his first two years, the Seahawks made the playoffs twice and won the Super Bowl once. Wilson became one of the most well respected quarterbacks around, succeeding despite being short for a quarterback. This year, like most of the team, Wilson has struggled a little bit on and off the field. On the field, his quarterback rating has dropped a little compared to his first two years. Off the field, he’s been accused of being both too close to management and “not black enough.”

Richard Sherman, Cornerback on the Seattle Seahawks

Richard Sherman was launched into the broader public consciousness when he allowed (or if you’re more cynical, decided to) his in-game passion to roll over into a post-game interview after last year’s playoff game against (you guessed it), the San Francisco 49ers. Sherman was briefly labeled as some kind of stereotypical football playing mouthful half-wit before people remembered that he’s every bit as much an intellectual achiever as an athletic one. This year, Sherman hasn’t played quite as well as he has in past years but I imagine he will be on top of his game for this one. He certainly has been on the top of his press conference game, as he showed in this light-hearted yet biting satirical rebuttal to the NFL’s fine for Lynch after his “Yeah” conference.

A Thanksgiving crossword puzzle

Thanksgiving is finally upon us!

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been promoting a Guide to Football for the Curious that I put together from the best of my writing about football on this site. In the guide, I cover all the basic elements of football — how scoring works, what the positions are, what fantasy football is and how football betting works, and why people like football. In addition to that, I tried to give some thought to how a beginner or casual fan can begin to enjoy watching football. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and if you haven’t, it’s not too late! Head over to the Thanksgiving Football page and download a copy now.

To celebrate the holiday and as a fun way to quiz your knowledge of football before you see your football loving relatives tomorrow, here’s a Thanksgiving Football crossword puzzle that I created. All of the terms, names, and phrases are explained in the Guide to Football for the Curious, so seek your answers there if you’re stumped.

A couple notes about the puzzle. You know you’ve gotten an answer right when the words (confusingly) are highlighted in a light red. If your answer remains black text on a white background, it’s wrong. To get the answers, click on the little key icon on the top left.

Have fun and Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for being a part of the Dear Sports Fan community!

2014 Thanksgiving NFL preview: Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys

The second of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games this year is between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys at 12:30 p.m. on Fox. This game is the turkey. It’s the main dish, the Pièce de résistance, the FOOTBALL GAME in all capital letters. Like a Thanksgiving Turkey, it can be delicious — tasty and flowing with good football juices — but it’s also just a little overrated. I mean, it’s no coincidence that we, as a culture, basically eat turkey once a year.

Plot

The Dallas Cowboys have the nickname “America’s Team,” which seems to engender more hatred than admiration. They do have an very big, national fanbase, but it seems like every other team’s fans hates their rivals first and the Cowboys second. That’s convenient for fans of the Philadelphia Eagles, who are specialists in sports hate of all kinds. The Dallas Cowboys are simultaneously the Eagles’ division rivals AND the Dallas Cowboys. That’s two times the hate for the price of one.

The Cowboys and Eagles enter this game tied for first place in their division with eight wins and three losses each. Both teams have succeeded in an unusual way — by running the football. The overall shift in football has been to pass more and run less but each of these teams has succeeded by running (literally) against the grain. The Cowboys do this by having a great offensive line and an excellent running back. The Eagles do this by having better designed running plays than anyone else. Not that the Eagles aren’t talented or that the Cowboys coaches haven’t built a good offense, but this game can easily be seen as a battle between great players (the Cowboys) and a great system (the Eagles.) One piece of evidence for this has been the ability of the Eagles to lose their starting quarterback and not miss a beat. When the Cowboys had to go without their starter for a game, they not only missed a beat, they got beat.

Characters

Tony Romo, Quarterback on the Dallas Cowboys

The quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys is one of the most visible and pressure packed jobs in sports. Tony Romo has had that job since 2006. His experience has been mixed. He’s been a very good quarterback but the team, during his career, has had no success in the playoffs whatsoever. The Cowboys have developed a reputation for failing at the most important and pressure packed moments and Romo has been a big part of that. The snap that Romo fumbled while trying to hold for a game winning playoff field goal in January 2007 (so harrowing was this play to the Cowboys fans that it’s still the subject of articles and counter-factual videos) was the beginning of Romo developing the reputation for not being a “clutch” player. His defenders note that he’s actually led lots of game winning drives but they say it with a defensive tone in their voices.

Dez Bryant, Wide Receiver on the Dallas Cowboys

Dez Bryant is the prototypical modern Wide Receiver. He’s big, strong, fast, powerful, and capable of making incredible catches. He also has a reputation for being a diva and for flying completely off the handle. He has a reputation for bad behavior on and off the field. It’s almost an annual tradition to see articles like this recent one from NFL.com with the headline, “Cowboys Concerned about Dez Bryant off the field”. These articles inspire defenses of Bryant, like this one from Cowboys site, Blogging The Boys, and also from less biased sources like Deadspin which ran an article contending that the “Dez Bryant Smear Season is Upon Us”. It’s hard to make any personal conclusions about players like Bryant because the information we get is biased by a combination of team allegiances, financial motives, and cultural, racial, and even positional stereotypes.

DeMarco Murray, Running Back on the Dallas Cowboys

As opposed to Dez Bryant, DeMarco Murray is an interesting figure because of his situation. Like Bryant, Murray is going to be an unrestricted free agent after this season. Like Bryant, Murray is one of the best in the world at his position. Unlike Bryant though, Murray plays Running Back, which is the most physically damaging position, and because of that, it has the shortest expected careers. Running back is now seen as an important position for winning football games but one where the athletes who play the position are interchangeable and expendable. Murray has played wonderfully this year, but he’s also been used more than he’s ever been used before. Some people wonder if the Cowboys are simply planning to use him up and then get rid of him at the end of the year.

Jerry Jones, Owner of the Dallas Cowboys

Most team owners would not be worth profiling but Jerry Jones is different. Jones is not only the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, he’s also the President and General Manager of the team. He takes a wide ranging and important role in almost all the football operations of the team. It’s common to see him down on the field, talking to players or coaches. He’s long been criticized for insufficiently delegating authority throughout his organization and much of the Cowboys’ lack of success has been blamed on him. That’s why there’s no one alive who is enjoying this year’s Cowboys season more than Jones. Jones is a charismatic powerful man, so it’s depressing but not surprising that along with compelling and complementary profiles of him there are also accusations of abuse.

Mark Sanchez, Quarterback on the Philadelphia Eagles

Mark Sanchez took over as the starting quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles at the start of November when incumbent starter, Nick Foles, broke his collarbone in a game. Sanchez was a highly regarded player when he was drafted fifth overall by the New York Jets in the first round of the 2009 draft. His time at the Jets started well with two consecutive successful years in the playoffs but was downhill from there. Things got laughably bad in his last year there, epitomized by the infamous “butt fumble” moment when he dropped the ball after running into one of his own teammates. His attempt to rehabilitate his career is off to a good start but he’s still the object of a disproportionate amount of scorn from fans and media.

Chip Kelly, Coach of the Philadelphia Eagles

People who write about football have a bad habit of overstating the brilliance of football coaches. Not every coach is a genius. In fact, for a sport that rewards innovation as much as football, it’s a surprisingly conservative profession. Most coaches design offenses that are just slightly different from what everyone else is doing. Not Chip Kelly. Kelly has long been a bit different. From his college coaching days in New Hampshire and Oregon to the Philadelphia Eagles, Kelly has been more aggressive and innovative than most coaches. He’s great at finding ways to use simple concepts to create open spaces for his players to run into. The simplicity of his offense plus some innovative play signaling grant his team the ability to run plays faster than any other team. He’s now leading the charge into using sleep and activity monitors to regulate, monitor, and customize every aspect of his players lives during the season. Creepy but effective.

Conner Barwin, Linebacker on the Philadelphia Eagles

Connor Barwin is one of the leaders of the Eagles defense. He plays the outside linebacker position where he has to tackle runners, cover receivers, and attack the quarterback often. He’s also one of the more unique characters in the NFL. At 6’4″, 264 lbs, Barwin may be one of the world’s biggest hipsters. He rides his bike to work, is a regular at music venues, and a proponent of marriage equality.

LeSean McCoy, Running Backs on the Philadelphia Eagles

One of the most fun things about the Eagles is how run-heavy their offense is, even in an era when running has become almost obsolete on most teams. The team’s primary running back is a perfect fit to benefit from Chip Kelly’s ability to create plays that give running backs room to beat defenders in the open field. LeSean McCoy, known as “shady” (a name his mom gave him as a baby due to his quickly changing moods), is the lead back. He’s got an almost unbelievable ability to change direction quickly which he retains, as we saw last year, in deep snow. He also hysterically says his own last name, “McCoy” as he runs by would-be-tacklers. The ESPN article on how he came to believe in coach Chip Kelly is a must read to understand him and Kelly.

2014 Thanksgiving NFL preview: Chicago Bears at Detroit Lions

The first of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games this year is between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions at 12:30 p.m. on CBS. Despite it being at the start of the day, this game’s Thanksgiving food analog is the classic Thanksgiving pies: pecan and pumpkin. It’s definitely traditional, like pies, the Detroit Lions, are an ever-present part of the day. And, like the pies, if it weren’t Thanksgiving, you might not find this game as tasty. While the other two games on Thanksgiving feature teams battling it out for first place in their divisions and a playoff spot, this game has one team still alive for the playoffs but the other lost its relevance several weeks ago.

Plot

For years and years, the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving game was a bit of a joke. Every year, the Lions would host a game and every year it seemed they would lose. Truthfully, they’ve been a bad team for a long time:

They’ve won one Thanksgiving game since 2003.
They’ve made the playoffs only once since 2000 and haven’t won a playoff game since 1991.
They’ve only had two winning seasons since 2000 and during that time became the only team in history to go winless for an entire 16 game season.

This year, everything is upside-down. The Detroit Lions are having their best season in a long time this year. They are 7-4 (seven wins, four losses) on the season but for the first time all year, find themselves in second place in their division, behind the Green Bay Packers. The Lions have lost two games in a row, so they are reeling a little bit, but they also must be liking their chops in anticipation of facing the Chicago Bears in this game. For years, the Bears have been the big brother that beat up on the Lions but this year the only big they are is a big mess. The Bears may have hit their low-point three weeks ago when they lost 55-14 to the Green Bay Packers on national television and dropped to 3-6. I was, frankly, surprised that their head coach was not fired following that game. Since then, they’ve won two games against sub-par opponents but these wins have not inspired much confidence at all.

Characters

Jay Cutler, Quarterback on the Chicago Bears

The quarterback of an NFL team is supposed to be its leader and moral center. Jay Cutler subverts that expectation publicly by appearing noticeably disinterested and disengaged from the game. He is so expressive in this way that he’s inspired a popular Tumblr blog called “Smokin’ Jay Cutler” that features photos of him with photoshopped cigarettes dangling from his mouth in honor of “the most apathetic looking athlete in the history of sports”. Cutler is a strong-armed quarterback (he once controversially claimed to have a stronger arm than legendary Denver quarterback John Elway) who is prone to making bad decisions with where he chooses to throw the ball.

Brandon Marshall, Wide Receiver on the Chicago Bears

Brandon Marshall is one of my favorite NFL players. He’s an outspoken advocate for mental health and lives his beliefs on the subject by speaking openly about his own struggles with borderline personality disorder. He’s every bit as passionate on the outside as Cutler is apathetic. Marshall plays his heart out on the field and sometimes blows his vocal chords out screaming on the sidelines.

Matt Forte and Alshon Jeffrey, Running Back and Wide Receiver on the Chicago Bears

Matt Forte and Alshon Jeffrey are important figures on the field and quiet ones off the field. Forte, from Louisiana, and Jeffrey, from South Carolina, are both understated stars. They let their play on the field speak for them. Forte is an excellent running back who does a lot of his damage on screen or swing passes. Jeffrey is a tall, powerful receiver, who often overpowers the defenders assigned to guard him. They both represent a type of quiet athletic elegance.

Martellus Bennett, Tight End on the Chicago Bears

Martellus Bennett is a receiving tight end with almost limitless talent. As a member of the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants, he showed tantalizing moments of superb play mixed in with a bunch of mediocrity. This year on the Bears, he seemed like he had finally put it together to play consistently at a high level, but has slid backwards over the past month. His persona slants more towards brash than anything else. His nickname, which he gave himself, is “The Black Unicorn” based on an answer he gave to a reporter who asked him about his conditioning in 2012: “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, I’m faster than I’ve ever been. I could run all day. I’m kind of like a black unicorn out there”

Calvin Johnson, Wide Receiver on the Detroit Lions

Calvin Johnson’s nickname is Megatron and, over his years playing football, he’s either evolved to fit the name or the name was a perfect fit for him to begin with. He is how you imagine a football playing robot would be designed. He’s tall — 6’5″. He can leap — 43 inch standing vertical jump. He is fast, very fast — 4.35 second 40 yard dash. Yet none of these raw measurements can express his excellence at making amazing catches when his team needs him to do so. He is a fantastic player.

Matthew Stafford, Quarterback on the Detroit Lions

Matthew Stafford is one of those classic enigmas of football. Because football is such an intertwined sport, it’s often hard to isolate the performance of one player from another. This is Stafford’s sixth year in the NFL but each one of them has been with star receiver, Calvin Johsnon. Even after six years, it’s hard to tell if Stafford’s good performances are due to Johnson’s brilliance or whether he would be successful on his own. Stafford plays football like a swashbuckler. He takes risks, throws from all sorts of strange angles, and plays through a lot of big hits.

DeAndre Levy, Linebacker on the Detroit Lions

Finally, we give the defenders some attention. DeAndre Levy is the leader of Detroit’s defense and potentially a prototype for a new breed of NFL linebackers. As the game has slanted more towards passing, a linebacker’s ability to cover tight ends and even wide receivers has become more important. Levy is one of the smallest linebackers in the league, which helps him in pass coverage, and one of the most explosive, which helps him defend the run. According to Robert Klemko in a fun profile of Levy in The MMQB, “Levy is an oddball with a prospector’s beard, a quiet nature and an uncommon zeal for travel.” Sounds like a fun guy to me.

Ndamukong Suh, Defensive Tackle on the Detroit Lions

Ndamukong Suh made his name as one of the NFL’s biggest bad actors, back when being violent ON the field was enough to qualify you for NFL bad boy. Now that we live in the era or Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, Suh’s offenses seem quaint in comparison. Elizabeth Merrill wrote of Suh in her profile of him for ESPN, “He likes to surprise people, finding immense enjoyment in debunking the notion that he’s a thickheaded hit man… he didn’t get his degree in basket weaving or, say, communications. He matriculated through a rigorous engineering program.” Suh is an enigma, a truly destructive force on the football field who seems to be a righteous dude off the field.

Brothers Fuller? Kyle Fuller, defensive back on the Chicago Bears and Corey Fuller, wide receiver on the Detroit Lions

This game could feature the rare sight of a pair of brothers literally playing against each other on Thanksgiving. If they were both healthy and playing, Kyle might easily be covering Corey, trying to keep him from catching a pass. Alas, Kyle hurt his knee this past weekend and may miss the game and Corey is relatively far back on the Lions’ depth chart.

Marc Trestman, Head Coach of the Chicago Bears

Trestman took an interesting path to become a head coach in the NFL. He made a name for himself as head coach of the Canadian Football League Montreal Alouettes, where he won two championships and became known as an offensive mastermind. That reputation has been sorely tested this year in Chicago where his highly talented offense has sputtered and stalled more than it has excelled. He’s definitely on the hot-seat and could be fired at the end of the year.

Jim Caldwell, Head Coach of the Detroit Lions

Way back in 2010, columnist Bill Simmons and his readers had tagged Caldwell as an almost absurdly unemotional coach. As coach of the Indiannapolis Colts, Caldwell was seen as almost a care-taker thanks to quarterback Peyton Manning’s hands-on domineering nature. As much maligned as he is, Caldwell has the Lions playing as well as they have for more than a decade, so he must be doing something right.

Week 12 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 12

Sunday, November 23, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Cleveland Browns 26, at Atlanta Falcons 24

The Browns keep Cleveland’s magical sports year going with a victory. Sure, it was a two point victory on a last second field goal over a 4-7 team, but still.
Line: The Browns continue to look good but they still seem like they play the worst teams every week.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 13, at Chicago Bears 21

All of Chicago must have been mournfully eating deep-dish pizza at halftime with their Bears down 10-0. Luckily for them, the Bears offense woke up in the second half and rattled off 21 straight points.
Line: Up and down, down and down, down and up, that’s the Chicago Bears this year.

Cincinnati Bengals 21, at Houston Texans 13

People in the NFL media talk about “coaching trees” and judge coaches, in part by their ability to foster assistants who later become successful head coaches. The Tom Brady “quarterback tree”, which numbers at least two current quarterbacks, including Texans Ryan Mallett, is not a healthy one. Mallett struggled in second start and the Texans could not overcome his play.
Line: Ryan Mallett played like a new starter on Sunday.

Detroit Lions 9, at New England Patriots 34

Meanwhile, the real Tom Brady continues to stand up. Last week the Patriots won by running the ball through the center of the defense. This week, the Patriots took a look at their opponent, saw that their run defense was very good, and decided to throw the ball a lot. Brady completed 38 of 53 (that’s a lot) pass attempts and led the team to victory.
Line: The Patriots vary their game plan more from week to week than any other team.

Green Bay Packers 24, at Minnesota Vikings 21

This was a close game but as an observer, you probably felt that the Packers were never seriously at risk for losing it. You would have been right.
Line: This game was not as close as the score makes it seem.

Jacksonville Jaguars 3, at Indianapolis Colts 23

Oh boy. After seeming marginally competent for a few weeks, the Jaguars are back to their old tricks.
Line: This game was exactly as close as the score makes it seem.

Tennesse Titans 24, at Philadelphia Eagles 43

It’s an interesting truth about the NFL that the measure of a good team is more that they beat bad teams by a lot than that they win close games against good teams. The Eagles did their best to prove that they were good by beating up on the not-so-good Titans.
Line: The Eagles outclassed the Titans.

SUNDAY, November 23, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

St. Louis Rams 24, at San Diego Chargers 27

The Rams continue to prove to everyone that they can play with the best teams in the league. What differentiates them is their inability to consistently beat the bad teams (like the Eagles did the Titans.)
Line: If the Rams could play as well against the bad teams as they do against the good ones, losing a game like this wouldn’t hurt so badly.

Arizona Cardinals 3, at Seattle Seahawks 19

The Seahawks pretty much knew that they had to win this game to have a shot at winning their division. The Cardinals didn’t know anything that drastic, so it’s no surprise the game turned out this way.

Miami Dolphins 36, at Denver Broncos 39

The Dolphins continue to develop into one of the best teams in the NFL. Peyton Manning continues to cement his legacy as one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history.
Line: Hey, I’d like to see this game again, please. Please?

Washington Redskins 13, at San Francisco 49ers 17

The 49ers have now won their last three games and six of their last eight without inspiring virtually any confidence in their worth as a team. The Redskins have inspired thousands of statements about their worth as a team over that time but none that are safe for publication on this website.
Line: Another week, another uninspiring 49ers win.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Dallas Cowboys 31, at New York Giants 28

Just this:

Nothing else that happened is worth talking about more than that.
Line: HOLY SHIT, DID YOU SEE THAT CATCH???

Rethinking injuries in sports

Injuries are a sad reality of sports. As athletes, even amateur ones, we know they’re coming and we just hope they’re not too painful or debilitating. As fans, we are transfixed at the edge of our seats whenever someone on the teams we root for goes down in a clump, grabbing their ankle or knee. As fantasy sports owners, we’re a step removed from the injuries and they transform into simple tactical obstacles that need to be overcome.

One of my favorite parts of writing Dear Sports Fan is reading other great writers cover sports in a way that’s accessible and compelling for the whole spectrum from super-fans to lay people. Here are selections from the best articles of the last week on the subject of injuries:

This article subverts everything we think about athletic injuries by focusing on the organ donor whose tendon was put into NFL quarterback Carson Palmer’s knee in 2005 and the emotional impact of this on her family and Palmer himself. It’s a brilliant article not least because of its restatement of the age old grandfather’s ax paradox. Can a donor live on through her donee’s achievements? What happens when her tissue is replaced?

Carson Palmer’s lasting connection

by David Fleming for ESPN

De Rossi’s final gesture of organ and tissue donation would eventually save or improve the lives of more than 50 people. One of them just happened to be a Pro Bowl quarterback in need of a new knee. “A cadaver didn’t save Carson’s career, that was Julie, a person called Julie,” says Dorothy Hyde. “There was absolutely no one else on this planet like her.”

Twenty-two months after she was killed,  De Rossi’s Achilles tendon became part of Palmer’s knee. Within five months, Palmer was already jogging. He was back under center for the Bengals 2006 season opener without missing a single game. “It’s a little eerie, but it’s also pretty amazing,” Palmer said in an interview just two days before he re-tore his ACL. “Dorothy’s daughter lives on; a part of her is still moving and running and cutting. All the things my knee is doing, she’s doing too.”

His latest injury has severed his physical link to De Rossi… Yet the deeper connection between Palmer and De Rossi remains intact. Shortly after learning about Julie while recuperating from his 2006 surgery in California, Palmer asked his wife, Shaelyn, to drive him to the DMV. Eight years later, when he reported to a hospital for his latest surgery, he would have been asked to provide identification and any pertinent medical information. Palmer would have reflexively reached into his wallet, pulled out his driver’s license and handed it to a hospital administrator.

On the lower-left-hand corner of the ID, just next to Palmer’s smiling, tan face, is a tiny dark-pink circle with a single word written in small, thick black letters.

Donor.

Questionable to Start is a great blog I discovered this week on my voyages around the internet. Its creator started with a simple observation that mainstream media’s reporting on injuries in the NFL was not based on historic data. So, he decided to collect the data, build a database, and now he writes about NFL injuries from an informed perspective unavailable to most. This article is a response to some criticism for a debunking statement Questionable to Start made about quarterback Nick Foles’ broken collar-bone — a debunking statement that turned out to have been correct.

Are all injuries really different?

by Craig Zumsteg for his blog Questionable to Start

Yes, all injuries are absolutely different. While two players might both have collarbone fractures, those fractures are often in different locations. Different levels of stress and mechanics caused those two injuries, so the extent of the injury is usually different as well. Different players heal and respond to treatment in different ways.

I have examples of two recent quarterbacks who suffered fractures to their left, non-throwing, collarbone. One returned after missing seven weeks. The other was close to returning around eight weeks, then suffered a setback and ended up missing the ten games before the season was over. Yes, I admit this is a dangerously small sample size.

With those two examples in mind, something rings false about any estimate that includes four weeks as a possibility. Yes, I guess that’s physically and medically possible, but it is not something we’ve seen from a quarterback… In order for me to believe that a four-week return is possible for Foles, I would like to understand the specifics of his injury. Why is Foles injury half as crippling as the ones Aaron Rodgers or Tony Romo suffered? It is entirely possible that Foles has a smaller fracture. Or that his fracture is at a location more likely to heal quickly. Or some combo of the two. But, without those specific details, I think that a historical comparison approach is the best tool we have available.

What is we could prevent injuries before they happened? We would have fewer beautiful stories like our first story today and less need for intelligent statistical coverage of injuries like in our second. Still, I think we can all agree that fewer injuries is a good thing. This article is about a revolutionary attempt to prevent injuries in downhill skiing — one of the most dangerous sports out there.

Airbag System Approved for World Cup Ski Races

by the Associated Press in The New York Times

Perhaps if Lindsey Vonn had a big cushy air bag to fall on when she tore two ligaments in her right knee she wouldn’t have missed the Sochi Olympics… Looking back, it’s nearly impossible to calculate what effect — if any — an air bag would have had in those crashes. But with a radical air bag system being approved for use in World Cup and lower level races beginning in January, Alpine skiing could get a lot safer.

The system — which entails putting an air bag in the neck area of athletes’ back protectors — was developed by Italian manufacturer Dainese in coordination with the FIS. It inflates when skiers lose control and are about to crash.

NFL Week 12 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 12

Sunday, November 23, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Cleveland Browns at Atlanta Falcons

Good cop: The Browns are only one half game out of first place in their division and the Falcons are tied for first place in theirs! As we get closer to the end of the season, the margin for error gets smaller and smaller!

Bad cop: All that is true but what you’re glossing over is that the 6-4 Browns are tied for last place in their division while the 4-6 Falcons are tied for first in theirs. Divisions are stupid.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Chicago Bears

Good cop: These teams both had big wins last week to keep their seasons alive!

Bad cop: Alive but in a persistent vegetative state.

Cincinnati Bengals at Houston Texans

Good cop: These teams have shown themselves to be adaptable survivors this year! The Texans are on their second quarterback of the year and may be missing their best running back too! The Bengals were without their best offensive player for more than a month! These teams show how football is a true team game!

Bad cop: It’s a team game but that doesn’t mean you can win the Super Bowl without stars. These teams don’t have stars.

Detroit Lions at New England Patriots

Good cop: I can’t wait to see this game! The Lions have a top three defense this year but no one is smarter at figuring out how to attack defenses than Patriots coach Bill Bellichick and quarterback Tom Brady!

Bad cop: I got nothing.

Green Bay Packers at Minnesota Vikings

Good cop: The Vikings are building a new stadium, so this year they are playing outdoors on the University of Minnesota’s field! That means these two NFC North division rivals will get to play a cold-weather home game in Minnesota! Old-school!

Bad cop: If the Vikings defense manages to even dirty Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ jersey a little bit, I’ll be surprised.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Indianapolis Colts

Good cop: Young quarterbacks Andrew Luck and Blake Bortles might be rivals for the next decade or more!

Bad cop: True. And maybe one day it will be a good rivalry, but for now I’m guessing we’ll see another game like the one between them earlier in the year when the Colts beat the Jaguars 44 to 17.

Tennesse Titans at Philadelphia Eagles

Good cop: The Eagles try to get back on track after their blow-out loss to the Packers last weekend!

Bad cop: And if they can’t beat the Titans, watch out for the Philly fans to pelt the field with boos, bottles, and batteries. That’s how bad the Titans are. That’s how they do in Philly.

SUNDAY, November 23, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

St. Louis Rams at San Diego Chargers

Good cop: The Rams are giant killers! They specialize in bringing strong teams to their knees! Their last three wins have been against the excellent Broncos, 49ers, and Seahawks! Let’s see if they can keep it going against the Chargers!

Bad cop: I’m not sure that I’d label the Chargers as an excellent team. In fact, I’m sure I wouldn’t. The Chargers’ last four games have been a close win over the Raiders, close losses to the Chiefs and Broncos, and a terrible loss to the Dolphins. The Chargers are just bad enough to easily beat the Rams.

Arizona Cardinals at Seattle Seahawks

Good cop: If the Seahawks lose this game, they’re morally eliminated (as opposed to mathematically) from catching the Cardinals for the division title! They’re gonna play hard!

Bad cop: Of course they will. Professional football players are paid to play hard. That said, you’re right, I think this will be a good game too. Which, means it will probably be terrible. Might as well just skip it.

Miami Dolphins at Denver Broncos

Good cop: The Dolphins are one of the hottest teams in the league over the last two months! Their only two losses in that time were three or four point losses to quality teams! Meanwhile, the Broncos just lost a stunner to the Rams! I think the Dolphins have a shot here!

Bad cop: Facing a pissed off Peyton Manning at home in Denver? I don’t think so.

Washington Redskins at San Francisco 49ers

Good cop: The two biggest soap-operas of the 2014 season face each other in a football game! How could you miss this?!

Bad cop: Daytime television at its worst.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Dallas Cowboys at New York Giants

Good cop: The Giants are the most dangerous kind of rival — the rival with nothing to play for except your demise! Watch out Cowboys!

Bad cop: The Cowboys are the most dangerous kind of rival — the rival that’s better than you. Watch something else.

MONDAY, November 24, AT 7:00 and 8:30 P.M. ET

New York Jets vs. Buffalo Bills in Detroit

Good cop: Fresh off their good deeds, the Buffalo Bills travel to Detroit to cheer up their fans with a victory!

Bad cop: I have to say, after 9+ feet of snow in a week, I do hope the people of Buffalo get their power back in time to see their team beat the Jets.

Baltimore Ravens at New Orleans Saints

Good cop: Despite their up and down seasons, these two teams are still in the drivers seat to make the playoffs… if they can win this game!

Bad cop: I like the driving metaphor. The Ravens are stuck in a traffic jam in the AFC North division. The Saints are close to the head of the pack in the tricycle race that is the NFC South.

Do Not Watch This Game 11.22.14 Weekend Edition

For sports fans, the weekend is a cornucopia of wonderful games to watch. This is particularly true in the fall with its traditional pattern of College Football on Saturday and NFL Football on Sunday and Monday. As the parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend of a sports fan, this can be a challenge. It must be true that some games are more important to watch than others but it’s hard to know which is which. As a sports fan, the power of habit and hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars get in the way of remembering to take a break from sports and do something with your parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend. To aid all of us in this, and just because it’s fun, I’m going to write a weekly post highlighting a single game that is ideal for skipping. Use this to help tell yourself or someone else: “Do not watch this game!”

Thursday, 8:25 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Kansas City Chiefs at Oakland Raiders. It’s on the NFL Network, but do not watch this game!

Some weeks, it’s difficult to write this post. After all, I am a big sports fan. I play fantasy football. I often say that I’m happy watching any kind of sporting event at all, and it’s true. I’ve got a long record of stopping on the sidewalk in New York to watch kids play basketball or handball. One of the elements of a trip in Europe I took last year which I loved was watching all the weird sports they televise out there in hotel rooms. Plus, I’m an optimistic guy — I always think the underdog has a chance to win. So, it’s sometimes tricky for me to pick a game to suggest skipping. The way I usually write the post is this. I head over to 506 Sports NFL maps to see which games are being televised when and to who. There’s no point in recommending that you skip one a game that only a small portion of the country could see anyway. For that reason, I look at the nationally televised NFL games first — Thursday, Sunday, and Monday nights, and then if all of them are too good to miss, I look on Sunday afternoon to see if there is a relatively big game that’s worth looking twice at. I look at point spreads to find games that are unlikely to be close and read other people’s previews of the NFL to hear what they think of the weekend’s slate of games.

I didn’t have to do any of that this week. This week, the answer is so clear, it basically leaps up out of my laptop screen and slaps me in the face as if I’m in Monty Python and it’s a fish. The Thursday Night football game this week is absolutely not worth watching! I’m not even going to provide an alternative this week. If you’re a Raiders fan, then… I’m sorry but save yourself the heartache and do something else. If you’re a Chiefs fan, have some mercy. You don’t need to see your team blow the poor Raiders out of the water.

The Raiders are winless so far this season and they look suspiciously like they might end the year that way too. It’s not all bad for them, they’ve been starting a rookie quarterback, Derek Carr, who looks like he might be quite good at some point. After all, even great quarterbacks like Peyton Manning (who went 3-13 his rookie year) need some time to mature. The Raiders have also managed to keep a bunch of their games relatively close. They came within a touchdown of beating the Chargers last week. They stuck nicely with the Seahawks a few weeks ago as well as the Patriots in Week 3. The problem is, the Chiefs are not to be trifled with right now. After starting the season slowly, they’ve won five games in a row and seven of the last eight. They’re fourth in the league at running the ball, averaging over 140 yards per game at an average of almost five yards per rush. The Raiders are the sixth worst in the league at rush defense. Not a combination that’s going to make for a good game.

Look, I can’t lie to you. There’s a part of me that does want to watch this game. There’s a 99% chance that it’s going to be horribly lopsided, which means there’s a 1% chance that it’s going to be hysterical and exciting to watch the Raiders win. In some ways, that’s more fun than a game that’s 50/50. Still, if you want to skip a night of sports, this is a good one to skip. We’re about to enter a period of eight days with an extra full day of football (three games on Thanksgiving) so it’s probably a good idea to store up some non-football watching goodwill.

Thanksgiving football gifts

Thanksgiving is a celebration of abundance. As divorced as most of us are today from the actual harvesting of food, we can still give thanks for the many good things we have in our lives. The ideal Thanksgiving celebration has lots of everything: food, family, cheer (both emotional and liquid,) and lots of football! Thanksgiving is not really a gift giving holiday but why not celebrate the abundance of life with some enjoyable Thanksgiving and football related presents. I know it’s getting close to Thanksgiving itself, but thanks to the wonders of Amazon and their horde of delivery drones [note from the federal government: Amazon is totally not using drones, we are sure of that. Well, pretty sure anyway.] it’s not too late to get yourself or a family member a lovely Thanksgiving treat. In addition to our free Thanksgiving Guide to Football for the Curious, here are a few fun selections:

Gobble Gobble T-Shirt or Onesie

By far the most elegant of the Thanksgiving Turkey/Football clothing I found, this clever design creates the shape of a football from the words “gobble gobble” and thereby inextricably links holiday meal to sport and vise-versa.

The Main Course is Football T-Shirt

If you like colors, this shirt comes in thirteen colors ranging from the expected white, grey, and beige, to unexpectedly bright greens, yellows, and oranges. The design shows a football with a drumstick attached. The makers of the shirt do not recommend you actually serve a football to your Thanksgiving guests but that could be one interpretation. If you decide to give it a try, please write me and tell me how it goes.

Baby Demands Football and Turkey

I have to say, if you’re looking for something to put your baby in that’s Thanksgiving themed, you can do a whole lot worse than going with the football element of the holiday. Half of the baby clothes I found on Amazon involve dressing the baby up as a turkey. Oh, sure, it’s totally common to say that a baby is cute enough to eat but I think actually camouflaging your baby as the main dish may be one step across that invisible line. This baby bib matches my Thanksgiving sentiments exactly and simply has the baby demanding turkey and football.

Peanuts Deluxe Holiday Collection

Who doesn’t love the Peanuts? This collection includes Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas, as well as the classic A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It also has special features like this free video of behind the scenes footage describing the creation of the famous scene where Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown.

Of course, if you’re worried about keeping your family busy while you cook (or conversely while you watch football if that’s the side of the holiday you’re on…) then you’ll need The West Wing so you can watch this:

What does it mean to throw the ball away in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does it mean to throw the ball away in football? I’ve been watching some football and I’m not totally ignorant about the game, but this phrase has always confused me. I know there’s a foul for intentional grounding. How can throwing the ball away be a good thing if there’s a foul for it?

Thanks,
Diane

Dear Diane,

Throwing the ball away in football is what a smart quarterback does when he scans the field and realizes that none of his wide receivers or tight ends are far enough from a defender to safely throw the ball to. The cost of an unsafe throw can be very big. If a defender catches the ball (called an interception,) the quarterback’s team loses possession of the ball. On the other hand, throwing the ball where no one can get it simply results in an incompletion. It wastes one of the offensive team’s downs (or chances they have to advance the ball) but that’s usually not a big loss. The trick is, as you mentioned, that sometimes simply throwing the ball to no one is illegal and the cost for being caught intentionally grounding the ball is severe. Let’s go over the rule and then look at ways that football team’s skirt the rule so that they can throw the ball away without being penalized.

The intentional grounding rule reads as follows:

Intentional grounding will be called when a passer, facing an imminent loss of yardage due to pressure from the defense, throws a forward pass without a realistic chance of completion.
Intentional grounding will not be called when a passer, while out of the pocket and facing an imminent loss of yardage, throws a pass that lands at or beyond the line of scrimmage, even if no offensive player(s) have a realistic chance to catch the ball (including if the ball lands out of bounds over the sideline or end line).

So, what does all that mean? First of all, it establishes the rule as subjective. It’s up to the referees to decide whether or not a pass has a “realistic chance of completion.” This is a funny thing when you think about it, because football players make catches routinely that have fans leaping out of their chairs and screaming in disbelief. One of the reasons to watch football is to see great athletes doing things that seem unrealistic. The subjectivity is necessary because the intent of the rule is to penalize quarterbacks for intentionally throwing the ball where no one can get it. So, we assume that football refs are used to what players can and can’t do, and we move on. The second thing this rule does is that it carves out a scenario where it’s legal for a quarterback to throw the ball fifty yards up into the stands if they feel like it. If the quarterback is “out of the pocket” he’s allowed to do this. The pocket is defined as an area starting where the offensive line lines up for a play and extending back from the left tackle’s left butt cheek and the right tackle’s right butt cheek into infinity. All a quarterback needs to do to be within his legal rights to throw the ball away is to run outside of that area and make sure he throws it past where the ball was when the play started. This keeps him from throwing it straight into the ground but it’s not much of a safeguard because quarterbacks can almost always reach the sidelines with a throw, even if they are actively being mugged.

Nonetheless, you’ll hear commentators complementing quarterbacks who throw the ball away from the pocket or chiding those who don’t all the time. This is because it’s totally common and accepted for a quarterback to throw the ball far enough from a receiver that it’s going to be safely incomplete 99.5% of the time but near enough to a receiver to establish the plausible deniability needed to avoid a penalty. As you watch football, you’ll learn to identify these times. A common scenario is a screen pass where the offensive team pretends to block as if they were protecting the quarterback but do it poorly enough to invite the defenders to overextend towards him. Then the quarterback is supposed to flip the ball over to a running back lurking several yards to the side, hopefully unnoticed by the defense. If any defenders catch on to this or “sniff it out” in football talk, the quarterback is in a tough spot because he’s about to get smashed by defenders who have been intentionally allowed a clear path to him but he has nowhere to safely throw the ball. Quarterbacks in this situation routinely throw the ball hard into the ground near the running back’s feet. Everyone knows he meant to do this but everyone also accepts that he won’t be penalized for it because the running back, acting as a potential pass receiver, was in the area where the ball hit the ground.

There’s a sports cliche that suggests that “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” Throwing the ball away lives in that murky grey area between legal and illegal. It’s an area that leaves fans of a quarterback who throws the ball away feeling proud of him without qualms, even while fans of their opponents are righteously indignant. Or at least they would be if they even thought about it anymore. Most fans have long ago stopped worrying about this inherently unfair aspect of football.

If you enjoyed this post, you might find value in my Guide to Football for the Curious. Get a copy here!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer