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NFL Week 3 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 Week 3 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. If you’re worried about watching too much football or if you’re negotiating for a little break during the weekend, read our weekly feature, Do Not Watch This Game.

Week 3

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

San Diego Chargers at Buffalo Bills

Good cop: Whoa, are we starting off this week with a humdinger! These teams are so hot, I wouldn’t watch this game without sunglasses! The Chargers just beat the defending champion Seahawks last week and the Bills are off to a great 2-0 start!

Bad cop: You again? Every week, I have to deal with your unrealistic expectations for football games. The Bills are a mirage that’s due to disappear any moment and the Chargers are a West Coast team flying east for an early game. Their biological clocks won’t be ticking “like this” and neither is mine over this game.

Baltimore Ravens at Cleveland Browns

Good cop: The surprising 2-0 Browns host a divisional opponent! I’m overwhelmed with enthusiasm!

Bad cop: Name a non-quarterback that plays offense on either team. Okay, you can’t, huh? There’s a reason for that. This game isn’t that exciting.

Tennessee Titans at Cincinnati Bengals

Good cop: Any entertainment featuring players named Giovanni Bernard and Bishop Sankey, whether it’s a football game or an exhibit on 14th century Italian art is worth paying attention to!

Bad cop: Cincinnati’s defense eats renaissance painters for lunch. 35-7, Bengals.

Dallas Cowboys at St. Louis Rams

Good cop: The Cowboys have one of the best offenses in the league, the Rams, one of the best defenses! I can’t wait!

Bad cop: What are we supposed to do when the Rams offense is out there against the Cowboys defense? Talk about a movable object meeting a stoppable force. Pshh.

Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions

Good cop: These divisional opponents always have exciting, high scoring games! Packer Aaron Rodgers makes me proud to write in green! Lions’ wide-receiver Calvin Johnson makes me wish I wrote in blue!

Bad cop: Ink? Color? What is this, the NICL? National Ink Color League? What are you talking about?

Houston Texans at New York Giants

Good cop: The Texans are off to a great start, 2-0, after going 2-14 last season! They’re the model the Giants need to look at for how to recover! And they’re playing each other!

Bad cop: Sheesh. Wasn’t this game on last week? I swore the Giants played some boring team and lost last week, why would anyone want to watch it again?

Indianapolis Colts at Jacksonville Jaguars

Good cop: Will this be the week we see Jaguars exciting rookie quarterback Black Bortles!!?

Bad cop: Bortles? You’re trying to get me to watch this game by saying the word “Bortles?” I don’t even know what a Bortles is.

Minnesota Vikings at New Orleans Saints

Good cop: It’s the season’s first “must win” game! At 0-2, the Saints have to win!

Bad cop: They will.

Oakland Raiders at New England Patriots

Good cop: It’s a rematch of the famous “tuck rule” game that launched Tom Brady’s career!

Bad cop: That was 13 years ago. Since then, these two teams have taken slightly different paths. Do not watch this game.

Washington Redskins at Philadelphia Eagles

Good cop: I am so excited for this game! Rival teams! A player (DeSean Jackson) who was ceremoniously dumped from the Eagles and signed by the Redskins who wants his revenge! What a great game!

Bad cop: It’s a good plot but will the game live up to it? It’s a shame Jackson hurt his shoulder and his quarterback dislocated his ankle the last time Washington played. Might be a bust.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

San Francisco 49ers at Arizona Cardinals

Good cop: Wow, the 49ers were humiliated by the Bears last week! They are going to be ready for this game against their rival, the Cardinals.

Bad cop: Were they embarrassed or are they just not very good?

Denver Broncos at Seattle Seahawks

Good cop: It’s the game of the week! A rematch of the last Super Bowl! This is the first time that there’s been a Super Bowl rematch during the regular season since 1997!

Bad cop: If the Broncos got crushed in a neutral field, what makes you think they’ll be able to put up a fight in Seattle, where the Seahawks are virtually unbeatable. Also, look over there!

Kansas City Chiefs at Miami Dolphins

Good cop: I love this game! Ahhhemshghsghs!

Bad cop: What was that? You love it because you don’t have to watch it since you’ll be watching the Broncos play the Seahawks?

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

Pittsburgh Steelers at Carolina Panthers

Good cop: Two of the biggest, strongest quarterbacks to ever play the game face off in a national showdown!

Bad cop: It’s not a size-off of quarterbacks, it’s a football game. The Steelers defense isn’t very good anymore and the Panthers’ is virtually unbeatable. Too obvious.

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

Chicago Bears at New York Jets

Good cop: These teams always have dramatic games! The Jets just lost because one of their coaches, named Mornhinweg, I might add, mistakenly called a time out! The Bears roared back in the second half of last week’s game to beat the 49ers!

Bad cop: Loving dysfunctional teams? Isn’t that supposed to be my schtick?

What does probable or questionable mean on the NFL injury report?

Dear Sports Fan,

First time playing fantasy football here. What does it mean when someone is listed as Probable or Questionable? If someone (say Andre Ellington) has a Sunday game and has not been seen in practice till Wednesday, is it a sign they won’t start that week? Also, what kind of injuries are the worst? Ankle?

Best regards,
Mengster

— — —

Dear Mengster,

It sounds like you’ve really caught the Fantasy Football bug! As I wrote in my recent post about what it means to start or sit a player in fantasy football, predicting which players on your fantasy team are most likely to play well in their real games is a big part of playing fantasy football. A player who is too injured to play is 100% positive to not score any points for your team, so researching and following your players’ injuries is important business. Luckily for us, NFL teams are required to put out injury reports every day which file all of their players as either healthy or under one of the four possible standard injury designations: out, doubtful, questionable, and probable. It’s actually not luck, the NFL requires teams do this because having this information makes gambling on football and fantasy football games possible. Oh, the NFL wouldn’t say that if you asked it^[1] but it’s true nonetheless.

NFL injury designations are officially tied to percentages. Out = 0% likely to play. Doubtful = 25% likely to play. Questionable = 50% likely to play. Probably = 75% likely to play. In reality, that’s not actually the case. The Wall Street Journal ran an article a few years ago about what the real percentages for these labels were. In it, they discovered that Doubtful players played less than 3% of the time, Questionable was closest to its “proper” percentage, just a little higher than 50% — around 55%. Probably players played more than 90% of the time. Although the article is from 2011 and the stats go back to 2006, I don’t think much has changed. I wrote my own qualitative descriptions of what each designation means in an answer to similar question last year from someone who asked about the injury report:

Probable — if a player is probable, he’s almost definitely playing. The team is either following the requirements and reporting that the player did not practice because they are suffering from some minor ailment or the team is trolling the system by obscuring real injuries with fake injuries to avoid giving their opponents the advantage of knowing who is actually hurt. This is a classic move of Bill Bellichick and the New England Patriots who once listed quarterback Tom Brady as probable for a few years despite him not missing a game.
Questionable — this designation is the only one that’s legitimate. A player listed as questionable might play or might not.
Doubtful — a player who is doubtful for a game is almost definitely not playing, the team just isn’t willing to admit it yet. According to this article about how bookmakers should use injury reports, only 3% of NFL football players listed as doubtful, play.
Out — nothing to see here, a player listed as out is definitely not playing in the upcoming game.

When thinking about fantasy football, I generally assume that players listed as “probable” are fine. For players listed as “questionable,” I dig in and do some research about their specific situation. Have they, like you said, been practicing? What kind of injury do they have? Did it knock them out of the last game or were they able to finish? You can generally learn a lot about a “fantasy relevant” player’s injury. For example, in Andre Ellington’s case, I can tell from Rotoworld.com that he “remains on track to play in this week’s game against the 49ers.” So, he’s probably fine for this week. A lot of players, especially running backs (who take the most hits) and veterans will regularly skip a day of practice. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. What you want to watch out for is someone who’s designation gets worse during the week (moves from Probably to Questionable) or someone who wasn’t on the injury at the start of the week but is by the end. Those are both bad signs for their likelihood of playing on Sunday.

In terms of what injuries are the worst, that’s probably worth its own post. I can say from having played fantasy football for years and followed a lot of sports in general, that the injuries which seem to keep players out for the longest are (excluding obvious things like broken bones, torn ligaments, and concussions): high ankle sprains, turf toe, and foot sprains. I know, those things sound less serious than rib or hip injuries, but an athlete lives and dies by his or her ability to plant off one foot and switch directions. You need your ankles, toes, and feet healthy to do that!

Good luck in your fantasy game this weekend,
Ezra

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

It would probably say, “AHH!! A talking league??!”↵

Do Not Watch This Game 9.20.14 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!”

Sunday, 1:00 p.m. ET, NFL Football, New England Patriots vs. Oakland Raiders. It’s on CBS but do not watch this game!

Hmm, let’s see here: Oakland Raiders wins in the last ten seasons: 49; New England Patriots wins in the last ten seasons: 124. It’s just about that simple — both of these teams have been remarkably consistent over the last decade. The Patriots have had one coach and, except for one year lost to injury, one quarterback. The Raiders are on their sixth head coach and something close to their seventeenth starting quarterback. This year, the Raiders are led by Rookie Quarterback Derek Carr, who won the job in training camp from veteran Matt Schaub, who the team signed after what had to have been one of the most ignominious seasons ever for a quarterback. Meanwhile, Patriots coach Bill Bellichick and quarterback Tom Brady just keep on chugging. They’re like a pair of crusty old train engineers who won’t quit shoveling coal. When Brady was recently asked how he would approach retirement, he said, “When I suck, I’ll retire. I don’t plan on sucking for a long time.” Although he is in the tail end of his career, Brady hasn’t started sucking yet, and this game will almost certainly not be the moment he starts sucking.

If you look at team defensive statistics so far this year, the Raiders look like they are pretty good at defending the pass. They’ve allowed the third fewest passing yards. This is a case where statistics lie. They’re not good at defending the pass, they’re just wretched at defending the run. They’re by far the worst run defense in the league, having allowed an average of 200 yards per game against. That’s almost 25 yards more per game than the next worst team and almost four times the best team. Another factor to consider is that NFL teams often run once they have a lead. The Patriots aren’t like most teams. They generally choose what they think is going to work best against their opponent and then they do that mercilessly the whole game, no matter what the score is.

The battle between spiky leather and tricorn hats is going to be over before it starts. Do not watch this game!

Of course, if you or the fan in your life is a New England Patriots or Oakland Raiders fan, this isn’t a good game to skip. As an alternate, skip the Sunday early afternoon game between the New York Giants and the Houston Texans. Why? Because Ryan Fitzpatrick and Eli Manning don’t exactly scream “excitement.” I can see them antiquing together. No, really.

Is it ethical to keep Adrian Peterson on my fantasy team?

Dear Sports Fan,

This may be out of your wheelhouse, but … ever since Randy Cohen retired, I can’t bring myself to email the Ethicist.

I loved watching football last year, even though I didn’t understand a thing. It’s been suggested to me that in order to really learn what’s happening, I join a Fantasy Football league. So, I have. My friend is helping me and our first-round draft pick is Adrian Peterson… Yeah. So, assuming he eventually plays again this season — what do I do? Is it ethical to keep him on my team?

From,
Erica

P.S. If it helps you decide, I stopped watching the WWE mainly out of ethical concerns. Am I just done with sports?

— — —

Dear Erica,

You are facing an ethical quandary.

For those who don’t know, Adrian Peterson has been accused of child abuse. Peterson left deep cuts on his son’s legs after beating him with a switch (thin tree branch). His son is four years old. The facts in this case are undisputed because Peterson readily admits what he did. In an article from the local CBS in Houston, near where this happened, reporter Nick Wright describes Peterson as “very matter-of-fact and calm about the incident, appearing to believe he had done nothing wrong and reiterating how much he cared about his son and only used “whoopings” or “spankings” as a last resort.” Like in the Ray Rice domestic abuse case, this story is augmented by visual evidence. In this case, photos of a four-year-old’s wounded legs. They’re readily available online but the child’s mother is apparently asking for them to be taken down, so I won’t even link to them. I’ve seen them and they’re fairly deep, long cuts around the thighs. They’re bad, and they reinforce Amy Davidson’s brilliant argument in the New Yorker that this case should not be a part of the cultural conversation about the appropriateness of corporal punishment. About that conversation, she writes:

This is a valuable, crucial conversation, and Carter is an important voice. It’s not, though, what we’re really talking about in the Peterson case. This preschooler wasn’t paddled or, as Peterson put it to police, “swatted”; he was whipped with a stick and left with open wounds on his body.

When this news broke, Peterson’s team the Vikings deactivated him from their roster. Since then he was briefly activated and then, perhaps after some serious meetings on the part of team management, re-deactivated. That’s where we stand now.

To return to your question — is it ethical to keep Adrian Peterson on my fantasy team? It’s an interesting and complicated question. First of all, let’s establish that it is a reasonable question to ask. As I wrote in my post about why fantasy football drafts are so exciting, fantasy owners do sometimes make (one-directional) emotional connections with the football players on their fantasy teams. Your success becomes linked with their success, so as you root for yourself, you root for them. Once you know that’s likely to happen, you do think about whether or not you’ll want to root for a player when you choose to have him on your team. In the past, players like Ben Roethlisberger (accused of sexual assault,) or Riley Cooper (filmed using the racial epithet aimed at black people during a country music show) would give fantasy owners pause during their drafts. In this case, when you chose Adrian Peterson, his record was clear and clean. You certainly were not acting unethically when you drafted him.

Now that you know what you know, is it unethical to keep him on your team? Being on your fantasy team doesn’t help Adrian Peterson in any material way. I suppose you could make the argument that the more fantasy teams he’s on, the more popular he is, and the more popular he is, the more likely it is for companies to sign him to endorsement deals. Rest easy, he’s not going to be getting any endorsement deals any time soon. Playing fantasy football absolutely supports the National Football League, and I could see an argument for not playing fantasy football as part of a larger boycott of the NFL, but that’s not what you’re suggesting here. Likewise, dropping him is not going to punish him in any way. While athletes are often very concerned with their video-game alter egos’ skill ratings, very few seem to care about their fantasy instantiations.

When you play in a fantasy league, there’s another set of people you should think of when it comes to ethics: your friends who you’re playing fantasy football with and against. You owe them some ethical consideration too. Here, the ethics are clear — dropping a player who you think has more value based on the rules of your fantasy league than the player you’re replacing him with is unethical. It’s unethical because it means you’re intentionally not abiding by the spirit of the group activity you agreed to participate in. You’re throwing the competitive balance of the league off. If your league, like many, plays for money, this ethical consideration is reinforced. In fact, with a star like Peterson, you often cannot drop him. Fantasy sites maintain lists of “undroppable players” that protect leagues against unscrupulous fantasy owners who may decide that if they can’t win, they just want to mess it up for everyone. Peterson has been on that list for years but was just taken off either because of people asking your question or because his suspension makes dropping him defensible from a competitive standpoint.

Ethics don’t require you to drop Peterson but they don’t mandate that you can’t either. You may be so angry or upset from reading about this story or seeing the photos that you just flat-out don’t want to see his name near yours. That’s fine, I support you in that decision. If you do decide to drop Peterson for non-competitive reasons, you should email your league first, let them know what you’re doing and why, and give people a chance to chime in. Perhaps they will simply agree to let him sit, unclaimed on the waiver wire, as if he has been put in time-out, which, come to think of it, is a strategy he might benefit from learning about.

Thanks for the question, let us know what you decide to do,
Ezra Fischer

What does it mean to start or sit someone in fantasy football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does it mean to start or sit someone in fantasy football? Fantasy football owners can’t actually control who plays in a real football game, right? So what gives?

Thanks,
Sal

— — —

Dear Sal,

Ha! I can tell from your question that you understand a little more than you’re letting on. No, of course, you’re right that a fantasy football owner can’t control which real players play in real games each weekend. Like many aspects of fantasy football, this is made more complicated by the fact that fantasy vocabulary shares terms with football but they mean slightly different things in different contexts. The choice to start or sit a player on a fantasy football team decides whether or not that player’s real stats will count toward the fantasy team’s score for the weekend. Making these choices is a big part of what makes fantasy football so fascinating and addictively torturous for people who play fantasy football. We already published a comprehensive post on how fantasy football works, so we’ll stick just to your question about starting or sitting a player. Here’s how it works.

Fantasy leagues vary greatly in how they are set up, but a fairly standard fantasy team will consist of 16 players. Of those, each week, only the statistics from nine of them will count towards the fantasy team’s total. The decision of which nine players of the 16 should count each week is the choice you’re asking about. Players that a fantasy owner selects to have their stats count are said to “start” or “be starting.” Players whose statistics an owner chooses not to have count are said to “sit” or “be sitting.” These terms mirror the decisions that real football coaches make about players on their roster for reasons of injury, relative skill, game-plan, or other factors, but they decide different things. In real football, the decision determines who plays in the football game and potentially who keeps their job and who gets fired. In fantasy, the decisions don’t actually affect the players in question, they only affect the fantasy owner and her fortunes that week.

The interesting thing about the start or sit decision in fantasy football is that fantasy owners have to make it before the games start each week. It’s all about prediction. The decision to start one player over another can be a determining factor in a fantasy game. For example, this weekend, I decided to start Jarett Boykin, a wide receiver on the Green Bay Packers, over Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver on the Chicago Bears. Boykin caught one pass for six yards. Marshall? Five catches, 48 yards, and three touchdowns. If I had chosen to start Marshall, and therefore had his stats count towards my totals, I would have won. Instead, I started Boykin and lost. Why did I make this decision? Well, similar to a real coach, I made it based on injury, relative skill, game-plan, and other factors. Marshall had a badly sprained ankle, my twitter feed was telling me he wasn’t likely to even play, and I thought that Green Bay would have an easy time throwing the ball against the Jets and Boykin would benefit from it.

Hindsight is 20/20 but foresight is variable. The more information about football games a fantasy owner has, the more reading and listening and watching and studying they do, and the better they are at compiling the data in their brains and their guts, the better their foresight is going to be. The more work a fantasy owner does, the better his or her start or sit decisions are likely to be and the more likely they are to win. This is the logic that makes start or sit decisions such an integral part of fantasy football and fantasy football such a force in driving interest in the NFL and the sport of football.

Hope this all makes sense,
Ezra Fischer

Why do quarterbacks slide?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do quarterbacks slide? I guess there’s some rule that you can’t touch the quarterback if he slides with the ball? Seems kind of unfair to me.

Thanks,
Fred

— — —

Dear Fred,

Why do quarterbacks slide? It’s a good question. You’re right that they are taking advantage of a rule when they do slide but it might not be as unfair as you think. We’ll look into the rule, discuss why it is that quarterbacks slide and other positions don’t, and check out a couple creative ways that players really do look to get an advantage out of sliding.

The sliding rule comes from a set of scenarios that end a play in football. In the NFL, that list includes criteria like, “when a forward pass (legal or illegal) is incomplete,”when the ball is out-of-bounds,” and the one that we care about in this post, “when a runner declares himself down by sliding feet first on the ground. The ball is dead the instant the runner touches the ground with anything other than his hands or his feet.” This rule applies equally to all the players on the field, quarterbacks are not special when it comes to sliding. Anyone who has the ball, can at any time for any reason, make the play end by sliding feet forward on to the ground. Once the play is over, of course, no one is allowed to hit the player with the ball unless they’ve already committed irrevocably to the motion of hitting the ball-carrier before the play ended. When we talk about rules on this site, we often end up categorizing them into rules intended to create even and exciting competition and rules intended to create relative safety for a sport’s participants. This one is definitely a safety rule but it has a competitive wrinkle built-in. As opposed to when a player dives forward with the ball, a player that slides feet forwards only advances the ball to the place where they first started their dive. Their team therefore loses out on a territorial advantage if a player decides to slide feet first.

The reason why sliding is commonly thought of as something only quarterbacks can do is because it’s usually something only quarterbacks actually do in practice. Part of this is tactical — there’s often a much greater difference between the starting quarterback and the backup compared to the starting running back or wide receiver and the next one on the team. It’s more harmful for a team to lose a quarterback than virtually any other position. Part of it is also cultural though. It’s simply not accepted for a running back or a wide receiver to voluntarily end a play by sliding the way it is for a quarterback. Quite the contrary, even running backs or wide receivers who run out-of-bounds or dive head first to avoid a hit are looked on slightly askance. As the impact of brain injury becomes more well understood, (and perhaps more importantly for this conversation, the protocols for handling potential brain injuries, because they take players off the field for a time, become more seriously enforced,) this cultural norm about sliding might change.

Some of the leagues craftier quarterbacks still look to get an advantage out of sliding. Not only do they protect themselves but, they think, what else can I get out of this process for my team and me? In Tom Brady’s case he thought, “maybe I can injure (or at least either scare or anger) my opponent while sliding.” So, he slid with his cleats up, like way up… like a baseball player sliding into second trying to cancel out a double-play. That’s a pretty perverse thing to do — to turn a move designed to guarantee one’s own safety into an attack. Smart man. Andrew Luck, quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts seemed to have been working the rules in a preseason game this year when he kind of slid sideways in a rolling kind of movement. Backup quarterback and connoisseur of treachery, Matt Hasselbeck, had this to say about it:

“It was sneaky,” backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said through a wry smile. “It wasn’t really a slide and it wasn’t really a dive.

“I thought he was trying to get away with the barrel-roll. I think he was trying to score. (If) nobody tags him down, he gets back up and runs. Watch the film. Genius.”

The slide in football is pretty much a quarterbacks only move now but I think we’ll begin to see that change over the next couple of years. My concern with the sliding rule, as a person with bad knees, has always been that sliding feet first, with cleats on, isn’t actually a safe move even if the rules say it’s safe. It’s way too easy to catch a cleat on the turf and end up with an injured knee. In college football, sliding is unnecessary because any contact with anything but hands or feet when a player has the ball immediately ends the play. That’s a safer rule and it doesn’t steal much excitement from the game at all. Maybe we’ll see that migrate to the NFL in time as well.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Week Two 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 2

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, AT 1:00 P.M. ET

Miami Dolphins 10, at Buffalo Bills 29

This past week, Buffalo got a new owner for the Bills who is likely to keep them in Buffalo instead of moving to Toronto or somewhere else. The Bills capped off a good week for them with a victory over the Dolphins.

New Orleans Saints 24, at Cleveland Browns 26

Mirage or reality? Both teams are wondering that after the ordinarily terrible Browns start the season respectably and the Saints start the season disrespectfully.

Detroit Lions 7, at Carolina Panthers 24

Panthers quarterback Cam Newton returns from bruised ribs and makes the Lions’ defense look like figs. (I am allowed one Fig Newton joke per year.)

Atlanta Falcons 10, at Cincinnati Bengals 24

The Bengals continue to be a really good team that doesn’t get the credit they deserve, I think maybe because they wear animal print uniforms and have a red-headed quarterback.

Dallas Cowboys 26, at Tennessee Titans 10

The Cowboys have become such a soap-opera that its surprising when they win a boring, well-played football game like this one.

Jacksonville Jaguars 10, at Washington Redskins 41

The big story here isn’t the convincing win but the dislocated ankle of Washington’s quarterback, Robert Griffin III. He was replaced ably by Kirk Cousins who, an infinite number of bloggers and media pundits will tell you, just might not relinquish the job even when RGIII’s ankle is healed. Drama!

New England Patriots 30, at Minnesota Vikings 7

Good team beats less good team missing their star running back because he was arrested for child abuse. Gah!

Arizona Cardinals 25, at New York Giants 10

After the first week, many people suspected the Giants were bad. Now, after losing at home to a team who had to start their backup quarterback at the last-minute, that suspicion is confirmed.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, AT 4:05 AND 4:25 P.M. ET

Seattle Seahawks 21, at San Diego Chargers 30

Down go the champs! Arm-chair sports psychiatrists will tell you this is actually a good sign for the Seahawks because it keeps them from getting too cocky.

St. Louis Rams 19, at Tampa Bay Buccaneers 17

Third string quarterback, Austin Davis, started this game for the Rams because of injuries to the top two quarterbacks and played well enough for the Rams to beat the Bucs.

Kansas City Chiefs 17, at Denver Broncos 24

Oddly, this close defeat may be the high point of the season for the Chiefs who just seem cursed this year. They lost another two important players, Jamaal Charles and Eric Berry to injury today.

New York Jets 24, at Green Bay Packers 31

Both teams are 1-1, both teams wear green, and we’ll have to wait at least one more week to figure out if both teams are good, bad, or just middle of the road.

Houston Texans 30, at Oakland Raiders 14

No such questions here, the Raiders are bad! Sorry Oakland fans.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Chicago Bears 28, at San Francisco 49ers 20

The story of this game was penalties. So many penalties! The announcers, much to my amusement, didn’t even bother to hide their disdain for the number of penalties in the game. After pulling out to an early lead, the 49ers kinda fell apart and Chicago came back to win.

NFL Week 2 Good Cop, Bad Cop Precap

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 Week 1 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. If you’re worried about watching too much football or if you’re negotiating for a little break during the weekend, read our weekly feature, Do Not Watch This Game.

Week 2

Sunday, September 14, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Miami Dolphins at Buffalo Bills

Good cop: The Dolphins and Bills are both 1-0 after surprising victories in week one! After this game, one team will be 2-0!

Bad cop: You did say, “surprising,” didn’t you? I’m surprised that you’re so enthusiastic about this matchup between teams that are going to inevitably fall apart, just like they do every year.

New Orleans Saints at Cleveland Browns

Good cop: Both teams are coming off high scoring, close losses to rivals! This one should be good!

Bad cop: Cleveland’s loss to Pittsburgh looks a little less like a sign of quality after Pittsburgh’s sad showing versus the Ravens. This is going to get ugly fast.

Detroit Lions at Carolina Panthers

Good cop: Wow, did you see Detroit wide receiver Calvin Johnson last game? He’s unbelievable! I can’t wait to see what he does this week!

Bad cop: Teal and Honolulu blue together are an eyesore. Just like this game.

Atlanta Falcons at Cincinnati Bengals

Good cop: I can’t wait to learn more about these two teams! Both looked great in week one, what will happen in week two?!!

Bad cop: One team will win, one team will lose, and you will overreact like a crazy person.

Dallas Cowboys at Tennessee Titans

Good cop: That wasn’t very nice! You’re not very nice! This game is nice though! Both teams have great pass offenses — should be fun!

Bad cop: Now you’re starting to understand. I’m Bad Cop. I’m not nice. Neither is this game. Both teams are awful. Why would you watch this junk?

Jacksonville Jaguars at Washington Redskins

Good cop: The Jaguars got off to a great start last week with 17 straight points! The Redskins didn’t play well but how long can you hold them down? They’ve got such explosive offensive players!

Bad cop: You’re not mentioning the 34 unanswered points the Jaguars allowed after that first 17. And the Redskins lost 17 to 6 to the Titans. Come on.

New England Patriots at Minnesota Vikings

Good cop: Bill Bellichick and Tom Brady are angry after their week one loss! I don’t understand that emotion but I think it makes for entertaining football games!

Bad cop: Ha ha ha. You’re funny, an emotion I don’t understand well. Another thing I don’t understand is how you think the Vikings are going to have a chance against the Patriots here. Boring.

Arizona Cardinals at New York Giants

Good cop: The Cardinals looked good last week!

Bad cop: The Giants looked horrible last week.

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

Seattle Seahawks at San Diego Chargers

Good cop: The defending champs against many people’s favorite long-shot to win the Super Bowl this year!

Bad cop: Seattle? With ten days rest? Against San Diego with six? Blowout.

St. Louis Rams at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Good cop: These teams both have great defenses!

Bad cop: These teams both have incompetent offenses.

Kansas City Chiefs at Denver Broncos

Good cop: Division rivals! Two playoff teams from last year!

Bad cop: Ha. You walked right into the trap. Read this week’s Do Not Watch This Game.

New York Jets at Green Bay Packers

Good cop: Gang Green against Green Bay! So much green!

Bad cop: I don’t even understand. How does that make me want to watch this game?

Houston Texans at Oakland Raiders

Good cop: I was just trying to distract you from this game! Even I don’t want to watch this game!

Bad cop: Really? I do. I love train wrecks.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Chicago Bears at San Francisco 49ers

Good cop: This game has everything! Two great coaches! Two exciting quarterbacks! Dynamic wide receivers! Solid running backs! Strong defenses!

Bad cop: A classic ‘too good to be true’ game. Something will happen to mess it up.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Philadelphia Eagles at Indianapolis Colts

Good cop: A great test of system vs. singular talent! Philadelphia’s got a remarkable offensive system but Colts quarterback is an amazing talent! I can’t wait to see them compete!

Bad cop: You do know that the offenses don’t play against each other, right? They both have bad defenses.

How does the coin toss work in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does the coin toss work in football?

Thanks,
Tod

— — —

Hi Tod,

When I was a kid, I played a lot of soccer, and I was often the captain. The captain’s one job was to go to the center of the field before the start of the game and be a part of the coin toss. It was pretty simple: one team, I think the away team, called ‘heads’ or ‘tails’. Whoever won the coin toss could choose to select either whether they wanted the ball first in the first half or the second half OR they could choose which side of the field they wanted to start on. The other team got the choice which was left over. If you won the toss and took the ball, the other team got to choose which side they started on. If it was windy and you wanted to choose a side, they got to choose which half they started with the ball. Simple, right?

The NFL’s coin toss is a little complicated but it’s not so hard to understand. Take a deep breath and… here we go!

The coin toss helps facilitate a set of decisions that need to be made before the start of an NFL game and before the start of the second half. The decisions are as follows:

Who kicks the ball and who receives the ball?
Which side does each team play on. (The teams will switch sides between the first and second and the third and fourth quarters no matter what.)

Each time these decisions are made, one team gets first choice on one of them and the other team gets first choice on the other. So, if you choose who kicks and who receives, I get to choose which side I want to play on. To make things fair, one team will get to choose which decision to make first in each half.

The coin toss exists only to decide which team gets to choose which decision to make first in the first half versus the second half. The team that wins the coin toss gets to decide: do I want to choose first between kicking and having the side I want in the first half or the second? If they choose the first half, then they get to make that choice immediately. Would they like to kick or receive or would they rather leave that choice to their opponent in the first half and instead choose a side to start on. If the team that wins the coin toss decided they’d rather make that decision in the second half, that’s their right to decide. Choosing to choose in the second half is called “deferring.” Here’s a diagram that shows the set of choices the team that wins the coin toss has:

For more information, the official NFL rulebook is succinct and logical on the subject of the coin toss but not very understandable. Instead, I suggest the Wikipedia entry on the subject.

One of the things that’s interesting to me how the coin toss works in football is that it reveals something about the history of the game. Given the rules, one team could get the ball to start the first and second halves, if they choose to receive in one half and their opponent would rather choose a side to start on in the other half. It’s not necessarily the case, like in my youth soccer experience, that one team starts with the ball in one half and one in the other. This reveals that having the ball wasn’t always seen as an advantage. Football is often said to be a “field position” game, which means that it’s more important where the ball is on the field than who has it. That’s not really true anymore because offenses are so proficient at moving (or matriculating, to use a football cliché) the ball down the field. Now, most teams really do want the ball. In the old days though, football games often went back and forth, with each team having the ball, getting a first down or two, and then punting. If you don’t expect to get several first downs each time you have the ball, then it’s more reasonable to want to start half with your opponent in possession of the ball but way down at their end.

In today’s NFL, teams that win the coin toss almost always defer their choice to the second half. The losing team almost always chooses to receive the kickoff in the first half and the winning team almost always chooses to receive the ball in the second half. This is because it’s a winning strategy. In fact, according to this Bloomberg article, teams that won the coin toss had a .530 winning percentage in 2013. The fact that this has become so formulaic is actually part of why it’s hard to understand how the coin toss works in football. It seems like the team that wins the coin toss by rule gets to receive the kickoff in the second half. It’s more complicated than that but now you know how it works.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Do Not Watch This Game 9.13.14 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 on Friday highlighting a single game that is ideal for skipping. Use this to help tell yourself or someone else: “Do not watch this game!”

Sunday, 4:25 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Denver Broncos vs. Kansas City Chiefs. It’s on CBS but do not watch this game!

I can hear the objections already. “Denver has Peyton Manning, a god among dominant-football-players-who-still-manage-to-remind-you-of-accountants.” or “But the game is a division rivalry!” Don’t listen to them, this game is almost definitely not worth watching. The Chiefs simply aren’t the same football team they were last year. They might not have even been the team we thought they were last year. One of the cool statistical things about football is that turnovers (fumbles and interceptions) are essentially random. Because they’re also extremely important, you can often predict when a team got really lucky one year and is likely to do worse the following year without all that luck. Last season, the Chiefs opponents turned the ball over 18 more times than the Chiefs did. That was a part of why they seemed like they were really good. Since then, they lost two star players, Brandon Flowers and Branden Albert to free agency during the offseason at essential positions, cornerback and left tackle respectively. Then, last week, in the first game of the year, they lost Derrick Johnson, their best linebacker to an Achilles tear. Just as a bonus prize, Mike DeVito, a defensive tackle also tore his Achilles. While everyone was busy tearing tendons, the Chiefs lost convincingly to the Tennessee Titans, a team that is a 75/1 long-shot to win the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, their opponents are thought to be the second most likely team to win the Super Bowl at 11/2 (if the season was played eleven times, Vegas thinks the Broncos would win twice.) And they played like it last week, shooting out to a 24-7 lead in the first half of last week’s game.

I know there’s tradition and rivalry involved but when it seems so likely — the Broncos are favored by almost two touchdowns — that the mercy rule would be involved too (if the NFL had one), it’s time to give this one a pass. Do not watch this game!

Of course, if you or the fan in your life is a Denver Broncos or Kansas City Chiefs fan, this isn’t a good game to skip. As an alternate, skip the Thursday night game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Why? Because the who wants to listen to another three hours of talk about Ray Rice and the NFL’s complete incompetence?