Category: Understanding Sports

What kinds of set pieces are there in soccer?

This is part two of our answer to a question about soccer set pieces. In the first section, we covered what a set piece is, how valuable they are, and delved into why some teams practice them more than others. In this section we’ll describe in some detail the major types of set pieces.

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a set play in soccer?

Thanks,
Kimberly

Dear Kimberly,

Soccer has a variety of types of set pieces. Now that you know generally what a set piece is and why it is unique and important, it’s time to describe the different types of set pieces. Let’s take a look at each one.

Corner Kick

When the ball goes out of bounds over the goal line and the last player to touch it was on the defensive team, a corner kick is given. The ball is put at the corner (no kidding) of the field and the offensive team gets to kick it in from there. Corner kicks are one of the most valuable set plays for the offense. It’s a free chance to swing a ball, in the air, into the penalty box right near the goal and try to head it in. Teams that get a corner kick frequently try to increase the odds of their team being the first to hit the incoming corner kick in the air but getting all of their tallest players in there. Since defenders are usually the biggest players on the field, this often means that some defenders move up when there is a corner and shorter offensive players move back to replace them. As a former defender, I can say that this is good fun for the defense. It also leaves the team that gets the corner kick a little vulnerable to a quick counter-attack since their best defensive players are all the way up near the goal they are trying to score on.

Sometime, the team with the corner kick will choose to play a “short corner”. Instead of a crossing the ball into the penalty area, one player on the offensive team will spring towards the corner of the field to receive a short pass from their teammate with the ball. Usually, this is a tactic to create a more favorable angle to cross the ball from as opposed to a complete rejection of the idea of crossing the ball. I have a personal grudge against the short corner and tend to get pretty upset when I see teams do it. I don’t think the benefit of the better angle is worth the cost of potentially losing the chance to send a ball into the box.

Goal Kick

A goal kick is what happens when the ball goes over a goal line and it was last touched by a player on the attacking team. The ball is placed within the smaller of the two rectangles around the goal, called the goal box, and a player (usually the goalie) has a free chance to kick the ball back into play from there. In professional or high-level amateur play, this set piece is not all that interesting or important. Goalies are able to pass the ball accurately to a defensive player or boom the ball halfway down the field (or more!) to an offensive player. In youth soccer, the goal kick is a little more exciting because kids usually cannot kick the ball as far or as well. In youth soccer, I remember the offensive teams lining up eagerly on the edge of the larger rectangle around the goal, the penalty box, and trying to intercept the goal kick and quickly transition to offense.

Throw In

When the ball goes out of bounds on one of the sidelines (also called touchlines) the team that did not touch the ball last gains possession of the ball and is granted a throw in. The throw in is exciting because it’s the one time when non-goalie soccer players get to touch the ball with their hands! Eh… actually, it’s not such a big deal. Any soccer player worth her weight, even in some non-precious metal like tin, is able to kick the ball much farther, faster, and more accurately than they can throw it. Most throw ins therefore become a quick exercise in maintaining possession. Usually, the player throwing the ball in will look for a teammate running towards him and throw the ball to that person who quickly taps it back to the thrower who is then free to do whatever they want with it. It’s all about getting the ball back into the field and in control of your team. When an offensive team has a throw in near the goal their trying to score on, close to where they would take a corner kick from, they may choose to treat the set piece like a corner that just has to be thrown instead of kicked. There’s usually someone on each team who can do a “long throw” and send the ball into the center of the field with as much pace as possible.

There are rules about how the ball should be thrown: Both feet have to be on the ground when the ball leaves the throwers hands. The ball must be held with two hands and the two arms have to move in parallel to eliminate putting tricky spin on the ball. You rarely ever see referees enforce these rules at the professional level but in youth soccer throw in fouls get called all the time.

Free Kicks

When a foul is called in the course of play, the ref stops play and the ball is placed at the spot of the foul. The team whose player has been fouled (or dove convincingly…) gets to put the ball back into play from that spot. When a foul is called anywhere far from the goal the team is trying to score on, the free kick is usually a quick deal. Simple possession of the ball is worth more than the chance to kick the ball a long way without being guarded, so teams with free kicks in their own half of the ball just pass it to an open teammate and keep the game moving. A free kick anywhere in the offensive third of the goal is one of the most valuable moments in the entire soccer game. Teams that get a free kick like this usually take their time, and then execute. Meanwhile, defensive teams try to counteract this by setting up themselves. Some defenders will take responsibility for preventing an offensive player from getting onto the end of a free kick pass while others set themselves up ten yards from the ball in a wall to prevent an easy free kick shot.

Free kicks are divided into two types: direct and indirect. Direct kicks are most common and there’s no restriction on what offensive teams can do with them. Indirect kicks are given for less serious fouls that violate a technical rule as opposed to a safety rule. Examples of fouls that result in an indirect kick are being offside, insulting a ref, or if the goalie touches the ball with her hands when she’s not allowed to. Indirect kicks are the same as direct kicks except two players have to touch the ball before a goal is allowed to be scored. Teams either use indirect kicks to pass the ball, often like a corner kick, or they set up two players near the ball and convert the kick into a direct kick by having one player touch the ball a tiny bit and then the other shoot the ball.

Penalty Kick

A penalty kick is a special type of set piece. The ref calls for a penalty kick when a foul which otherwise would result in a direct free kick is committed by a team within their own penalty box. The penalty kick is extraordinarily valuable. It’s like nothing else in sports, really. 85% of penalty kicks result in goals. That’s better than the league average for a free throw in the NBA! Okay, sure, the extra point in football is made close to 100% of the time but one goal in soccer is worth so much more than one point in football. The penalty kick is unlike any other set piece in soccer — so much so, that most people probably don’t think of it as a set piece at all. If you want to learn more about it, read our article all about penalty kicks.

There you go — that’s probably more than you bargained for about set pieces in soccer,
Ezra Fischer

What is a set piece in soccer?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a set play in soccer?

Thanks,
Kimberly

Dear Kimberly,

A set piece in soccer is any play that begins with the ball at a standstill following a stoppage resulting from the ball going out of bounds or a foul being called. Set pieces or set plays are unique in soccer because they are the only times when the ball is in the complete possession of one team, without the other team being allowed to try to get it from them. The team with the ball has all the time they want, within reason, to set themselves up in whatever position or formation they want before they put the ball back into play. Set pieces are much rarer in soccer than in other sports. American football is on the other extreme end of the spectrum. Football has only set plays — everything stops and starts between each play. Baseball is the same way. Basketball approaches soccer’s fluidity but there are far more stoppages between plentiful baskets, fouls, and time-outs.

Set pieces in soccer are very valuable. Over the past five years or so, the percentage of goals scored during set plays in top-flight soccer has varied from around 25% to close to 50%. One quarter to one half of all goals scored in soccer are the result of set plays! In the 2014 World Cup, the championship team, Germany, averaged a set play goal per game, the highest in the tournament.

For something that’s so important, it’s surprising that there is such variation in how teams think about and practice set plays. Some teams practice them obsessively and even study how opposing teams try to defend them so they can use their opportunities even more effectively. Other teams look like they’re almost… well, winging them — playing them by ear. Trusting to the instincts and ideas of players on the field to figure out what to do with them as they come up. I have two potential theories for why this is.

The first is a cultural theory and it absolutely relies on gross national stereotypes, so it’s worth saying that I believe these tendencies are completely fluid and have absolutely nothing to do with anything integral to the people involved. For whatever reason, some national traditions of soccer are more focused on fluid play than others. English soccer is on one extreme — the English tend to play long ball, kicking the ball far in the air and then going up to get it. As such, the English are more likely to practice free kicks obsessively as an extension of their historic/cultural tendencies. The Brazilians are the opposite. They’re traditionally known for playing a fluid style based more on short passing, movement off the ball, and brilliant individual skill. Brazilian teams would stereotypically be less likely to spend time in practice working on set pieces because they are kind of the antithesis of how they like to play. Of course, just to make sure we don’t go too far overboard with this theory, we have the counter-example of the Brazilian fullback Roberto Carlos who was one of the best on set pieces ever:

I experienced a tiny microcosm of the cultural theory as a kid. My youth team was coached by a Guatemalan immigrant and we barely ever practiced set pieces. The teams we played against, particularly one run by a German-American group, had clearly practiced them a lot.

The second theory is that set pieces are a chance for less skilled teams to beat more skilled teams, so they are the ones that practice set pieces more. Keeping possession of the ball in a soccer game is all about talent. Creating a goal in the flow of the game is a challenge that can only be achieved with dominant skill or incredible luck. Set pieces, however, can be done with mostly precision and discipline. As The Guardian suggested in a 2009 article on this subject, there’s “a feeling that the top sides do not need to expend so much time and energy working on breaking down opponents through set-pieces when the goals tend to flow so easily from open play.” Whether it’s true or not, there’s a sense that practicing set pieces can only happen to the detriment of developing more important facets of the game. This is an argument sometimes used against how the United States develops soccer players.

Soccer has a variety of types of set pieces. Tomorrow, we’ll go into detail on each type of set piece: the corner kick, goal kick, free kick, and penalty kick.

Until then,
Ezra Fischer

 

Why do fantasy football playoffs start so soon?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’m playing fantasy football for the first time this season and I’m doing well. I’m 8-5 and heading to the playoffs! But I have a question — why do the fantasy football playoffs start so soon? It feels funny to have our playoffs start while the NFL regular season still has a while to go.

Thanks,
Brandon

Dear Brandon,

Congratulations on your first successful regular season of fantasy football! Making the playoffs is quite an achievement in your first year. Interesting question about the timing of the fantasy football playoffs. The overarching answer is that the fantasy playoffs are scheduled with the goal of making them occur during a time that the NFL is behaving roughly the way it has been since the start of the season. Let’s take a closer look at this.

The first thing about fantasy football and its schedule is that you can’t align fantasy football’s schedule with real football’s schedule. It would be smart, in many ways, if the fantasy football playoffs could be during the NFL playoffs because that would  mean the peak of many people’s motivation to watch football would occur at the same time as the most exciting time in the NFL calendar. It can’t happen though, because fantasy football teams rely on players from all 32 teams and only 12 make the playoffs. In order to play fantasy football during the real playoffs, you’d need to completely recreate your fantasy teams with only players from playoff teams. This breaks the continuity of fantasy football which is based on having roughly the same players on your team from week to week during the season. So, the fantasy playoffs have to be during the NFL regular season when all the teams are still playing.

That leads us to the second factor that goes into the scheduling of the fantasy football playoffs. During Week 17, the last week of the season, it’s common for teams that have already clinched a place in the playoffs and are stuck in the same seed, whether they win or lose, to rest some of their best players. Those players are often some of the best fantasy statistic accumulators as well as NFL players. So, many fantasy leagues, but not all, try to end their fantasy seasons before Week 17 of the NFL schedule.

That pushes the fantasy finals to Week 16. Working back from there, the way the majority of leagues do it, that means the semifinals are in Week 15, and the quarterfinals — usually the first round of the fantasy playoffs — are in Week 14.

  • NFL Weeks 1-13 — Fantasy regular season
  • NFL Week 14 — First week of the fantasy playoffs
  • NFL Week 15 — Fantasy semi-finals
  • NFL Week 16 — Fantasy championship game
  • NFL Week 17 — Too unstable because NFL teams might rest their best players, so no fantasy
  • NFL Playoffs — 20 of 32 teams don’t play, making fantasy football, at least the way we know it, impossible or very, very impractical

There are some common variations to this standard schedule. One that I think is smart is a fantasy playoffs where each round of the playoffs takes place over two weeks. Instead of a single week’s worth of games deciding who wins between your fantasy team and your fantasy opponent, you play over the course of two NFL weeks and whichever fantasy team has the most cumulative points at the end, advances. This is cool for two reasons: first, it makes the fantasy playoffs a little more statistically significant than an often fairly random one week competition; second, it makes the game more tactically interesting because it pushes fantasy owners into decisions about going for broke after the first weekend if they are behind or playing it safe if they’re ahead. Another common variant is to use Week 17, either within a two week fantasy championship or as a one week final game. This means that as you’re assembling your final roster, you need to think about teams that might have no reason to play their best players on the final week of the schedule and about the players that might replace them. Sometimes those replacement players can be very important. The best example of this was back on January 1 of 2012 when the Green Bay Packers rested quarterback Aaron Rodgers for the last game of the season. His replacement, Matt Flynn sauntered into the game and threw 480 yards and six touchdowns or roughly 55 points in standard fantasy scoring! I prefer leagues that do not play on Week 17 because the confusion of that week cheapens the rest of the season just a little bit but it definitely adds an interesting tactical wrinkle.

Good luck in the playoffs,
Ezra Fischer

What is the key in basketball and why is it called that?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is the key in basketball and why is it called that? I don’t watch a lot of basketball but I was watching with a girlfriend of mine who is a Memphis Grizzlies fan and I kept hearing her shout about the key.

Thanks,
Melissa

Dear Melissa,

The key is one of the name given to an area below and in front of the basketball hoop. It’s also commonly called the paint or the lane. That area is special because players in it have to obey slightly different rules than those outside of it. It’s called the key because when it was first instituted in 1936 it was shaped roughly like a… well, not a key honestly, but an old fashioned key hole — a narrow rectangle opening up into a circle. Over time, the area has been enlarged, specifically the rectangle at the base of the key, until the circle at the top is either the same width as the rectangle or smaller. Here are the rules that apply differently within the key:

  • Three second rule:  Offensive players are only allowed to hang out in the key for three seconds, whether they have the ball or not. In the National Basketball Association, defenders may also not be in the key for more than three seconds unless they are directly guarding an offensive player. This rule is intended to limit cherry picking, otherwise a team could theoretically win by hiring a nine-foot tall guy to stand under the basket, catch passes and drop them into the basket. Amirite?
  • On free throws: The key also designates where players are allowed to stand during a free throw attempt. The player shooting the ball has to be in the top half of the circle at the top of the key and the other players waiting to pounce on the rebound if the shooter misses have to be lined up on the outside of the key.
  • On jump balls: When something happens where possession of the ball (in the NBA, college has a different way of dealing with this) cannot be determined but the position of the ball was definitely in one team’s end, a jump ball takes place. The ref will throw the ball up in the air in a neutral spot between two jumpers who try to tip the ball to their teammates. This takes place at the center of the circle at the top of the key and everyone except the jumpers and the ref have to stay out of the circle until the ball is touched.

I’m not sure who first called this area the key. In the NBA rule book, it is referred to as the “free throw lane”, a term you’ll basically never hear any living, breathing basketball fan use. Nonetheless, it’s a nice coincidence or a clever pun because the key has a double meaning. Now you know about the original shape of the free throw area but as you watch or play more basketball, you’ll quickly realize that the key is often the key to who wins and who loses. Shots from within the key are the highest probability shots. Most rebounds are grabbed by players within the key. Just dribbling hard into the key often results in free throws for the team that does it best. Your friend’s favorite team, the Memphis Grizzlies, have two dominating big men, Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph who are masters within the key. If she was shouting about it, my guess is that she was celebrating their dominance.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

What is a pick and roll in basketball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a pick and roll in basketball? I hear about it all the time when I watch NBA games but I don’t think that I understand it 100%. Can you help?

Thanks,
Rosie

Dear Rosie,

The pick and roll is a two-person basketball play which seeks to create a little room between one of the offensive players and the defensive player who is guarding them. The pick and roll is one of the foundational tactics in basketball. Understand it once and you’ll begin to see it and variations of it all over the place. Or, at least, you’ll see it a lot in basketball games. Maybe once in a while at the grocery store or in the subway too. The principles of the pick and roll are the same principles that underly a lot of other tactical decisions in basketball, so understanding the pick and roll will help you make sense out of basketball in general. Let’s get down to business. We’ll start with the principles that underly the pick and roll.

Principle 1: It’s very hard to get away from a defender in basketball. Basketball courts are not that big and, at least in high-quality leagues like the NBA, WNBA, FIBA, and college basketball, opponents are of relative equality in terms of athletic ability. Sometimes, if there’s a scramble on one end of the court and the defense gets the ball and is able to quickly transition to offense, you will see players running on offense free of a defender, but most of the time, defensive players are never more than a step from an offensive player.

Principle 2: It’s hard to score if a defender is close by. This is true at all levels of basketball. In my own rec-league basketball experience, I get almost totally paralyzed trying to shoot if a defender is near me. Even professionals find it much more difficult to score with a defender close to them. Even if the defender doesn’t block the shot, they will likely be able to “alter” the shot (force you to shoot at an angle you’re not comfortable with) by “contesting it” by sticking their hand in your face or near the natural release point of your shot as you’re shooting.

One natural conclusion from these two principles is that any tactic that creates even a little bit of separation between an offensive player and her defender is a valuable one. The pick and roll does this through creating an obstacle on the court that defenders have to run around. The play involves two attackers and two defenders. One attacker has the ball and one does not. The offensive player without the ball stands still (basketball rules prohibit intentionally getting in someone’s way unless you’re standing still.) The player with the ball dribbles quickly towards the player who has transformed into an obstacle and passes very, very close to him or her, on the side farthest from the basket they are trying to score on. This is the first half of the play. The player on offense without the ball has just executed a pick by standing still and allowing the ball-handler to run around him. Before we move on to the second half, let’s examine what this first half has done.

The first half of the pick and roll puts the defender who is marking the player with the ball in quite a pickle. If he follows the player with the ball around the obstacle of the player setting the pick, this motion will likely put him a step behind the player with the ball instead of a step ahead, with his body between the player with the ball and the basket he is defending. This is called going “over” the pick. If she chooses to go “under” the pick, this means that instead of chasing the player with the ball, she’s sliding to the other side of the pick and hopes to catch up to the player with the ball on the other side. This is risky because in that second it takes to regain coverage of the player with the ball, the ball-handler may be able to shoot or pass the ball or change direction or pace and drive to the basket unopposed. The last option is for the defenders to switch which player they are guarding. The defender following the ball-handler takes the player setting the pick while the defender on the player setting the pick slides off of that assignment and onto guarding the ball-handler as they come around the pick. The potential downside of this is that usually the picking player is a bigger player than the one handling the ball and therefore has a bigger defender. Switching often gives the offense a mismatch (or two, really) with a bigger, slower player guarding a small, fast one and a smaller player trying to match the physicality of a bigger player.

Now that you understand the plight a good pick puts a basketball defense in, we can move on to the second half of the pick and roll, the roll. As the ball-handler goes around the player setting the pick, the player setting the pick turns and runs towards the basket. That’s the roll. This serves to turn up the pressure on the defense even farther and opens up an easy option to score for the offense. The rolling motion forces a defender to go with the picking player, who, until recently was just a static obstacle. That way, regardless of what the defense does, but particularly if the defense switches, there’s a good chance that the player who just set the pick will be open for a pass that leads him towards the basket for an easy layout.

If you want to see how these options work in real, three dimension life, this instructional video filmed by the 1980s Boston Celtics is an awesome way to learn:

Finally, why is it called a pick and roll? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary this use of the word pick could come from its meaning of “a blow with a pointed instrument.” In basketball terms, the pointed instrument is the player setting the pick and the blow is the easy basket that often follows. As for the roll? Well, that’s the motion of the player who sets a pick and then rolls their body towards the basket.

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer

 

Happy Thanksgiving from Dear Sports Fan

As I’ve said a few times over the past couple weeks, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year! Thanks so much for being a part of it this year. Before I descend full-time into the kitchen (this year, my girlfriend and I are hosting and we’ll be cooking: braised turkey thighs, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, squash au gratin, a mushroom galette, stuffing, creamed onions, cranberry relish, and some more vegetables, steamed and buttered reprehensibly), I wanted to share all of the Thanksgiving themed Dear Sports Fan things from this year.

Our Guide to Football for the Curious

The biggest thing I worked on for Thanksgiving was this ebook beginner’s guide to football. The guide covers why people like football, how football works, what the positions are, and how to begin enjoying football on television. You can take a glimpse at the table of contents and sign up for our newsletter to get a free copy of Dear Sports Fan’s Guide to Football for the Curious here.

Once you’ve read the guide (or at least the game previews below), you’ll be ready to test your football knowledge with our brand new Thanksgiving football crossword puzzle!

Game Previews: Plot and Characters

12:30 – Chicago Bears at Detroit Lions

4:30 – Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys

8:30 – Seattle Seahawks at San Francisco 49ers

Found on the Internet

Thanksgiving gifts

Excerpts from the best stories around the web

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. 

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

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.

Why do soccer teams pass the ball backwards so much?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do soccer teams pass the ball backwards so much? Sometimes they go all the way back to their goalie. I know it makes me seem like a dumb American but I get so annoyed when soccer teams do this. Aren’t they trying to score? What’s up with that?

Thanks,
Shane

Dear Shane,

Yours is a common question. It does seem counter-productive to move the ball backwards so much in soccer. I admit, even having played soccer my whole live and having spent many more happy hours watching soccer, that at times, I share your annoyed feelings. There are good reasons why soccer teams pass the ball backwards so much and it’s worthwhile to explore them because they touch on some of the core principles of soccer.

The first reason why teams pass the ball backwards so much is because it helps them keep the ball longer and having the ball is much less tiring than chasing the ball. Fatigue is an important element of soccer. The game is one and a half times longer than football and hockey and almost twice as long as basketball. Soccer is also much more restrictive when it comes to substitutions than those other sports. In most competitive soccer, only three subs are allowed for the whole game. Being more fit than the other team is a big advantage and possessing the ball for a majority of the time is a big tactical advantage when it comes to fatigue. The team with the ball moves as it wishes, offering a chance for some to catch their breath while others make short, sprinting runs up field. The team without the ball is forced to chase, not just the ball, but person with the ball, and anyone else who is running around the field. As the team with the ball moves forward towards the goal they are trying to score on, they meet increasingly more resistance from a higher concentration of defenders. This increases the chances that they will lose the ball and have to transition to more tiring defensive behavior. If, on the other hand, they pass the ball backwards, they’re less likely to lose the ball and they can continue tiring the other team out. Advantage team with the ball, advantage passing backwards.

Of all the major sports, soccer is the hardest sport to score in. As I wrote in my post answering “Why do people like soccer?” there are four key factors in this:

  • First they take away the most dextrous limbs at your disposal, your arms. No using your hands or arms.
  • Then they put a ball on the field that, if you kick it hard enough, bends and dips in all sorts of fairly unpredictable ways.
  • Controlling this ball without using your hands means that your top speed with the ball is way slower than a defender can run without the ball.
  • Finally, they allow one player, the guy who is there with the sole purpose of preventing you from scoring, to use his hands.

All of these offensive disadvantages are magnified when operating in a space with a higher density of defenders. The precision a player needs to hold on to the ball, pass it to a teammate, or get a reasonable shot on goal increases seemingly exponentially when surrounded by two, three, or four defenders. Soccer players know this. They know that they have a much better chance of scoring if they can do it against a sparse collection of defenders. One way to do this is to allow the other team to have the ball and attack your side of the field. Then, try to steal it from them and quickly transition to offense before all their players can run back to defend. That’s a risky proposition! Passing the ball backwards is a safer, if slightly less effective way of achieving the same effect. By moving the ball back towards your own net, you tempt the opposition to follow you, stretching their position and decreasing their ability to completely surround and stymie your attackers.

You’ll often hear soccer announcers or fans talking about a team’s “shape.” In a sport that has a lot of unique words, at least for Americans, like “nil” for “zero”, “pitch” for “field”, or “golazo” for “holy shit, did you just see that unbelievable goal”, it would be easy to dismiss this linguistic peculiarity. It would be a mistake. The metaphor of shape is incredibly useful when watching soccer. It’s so difficult to translate the positions and actions of 22 players in constant motion into meaningful tactics. If you think about each team as having its own shape, with edges defined by the outermost players to the front, back, and sides of the field, then understanding what a team is trying to do becomes easier. I think of soccer as a game between two globs of semi-liquid, semi-solid gloop. When a team’s shape is compact, it’s very tough to cut through it and score. When a team’s shape gets stretched out, it’s much easier. When the team with the ball passes it backwards, they’re trying to stretch their opponents shape until it becomes thin enough to poke through with a few passes ending in a goal.

Hope this makes sense,
Ezra Fischer

Strange sports: jousting and zoning out

Here at Dear Sports Fan we tend to have inclusive opinions about sports. Oh, sure, I like getting into bar arguments about whether baseball or soccer or darts or pool or car racing or boxing or log rolling is really a sport as much as the next guy, but at the end of the discussion, if any of those things are being shown on TV, I’ll happily watch it. As long as something is competitive and requires some combination of physical and mental expertise, I think it’s a sport. Recently two strange sporting events came to my attention. The first requires total precision and complete focus in the midst of a high speed world. The second requires total relaxation and complete inattention in the midst of a high speed world. It’s hard to say which is a more more impressive feat. The first is a modern form of the Middle Ages sport of jousting. The second? An innovative “spacing out” tournament held in Seoul, South Korea.

Most of us have a general understanding of jousting from movies or books. Two heavily armored knights charge at each other on horses with long wooden spears called lances and the winner knocks the loser off his horse. Jousting emerged as a sport in the 1300s out of fairly disreputable duels fought between people on horseback. These pre-sport jousts often began with two or more combatants on horses with lances but would continue with hand-held weapons once the fighters were close enough to make lances unwieldy. As the principles of chivalry swept through the upper classes of Northern Europe, jousting transformed into a generally non-lethal competition. Throughout the Renaissance, the joust became increasingly specialized and distant from actual fighting. A barrier was put in to separate the two competitors and specialized jousting armor was created which could weigh up to a hundred pounds. Jousting as a popular form of sport came to its end at the very tail end of the 1500s when King Henry II of France was killed in a jousting accident.

Luckily for us, that’s not the end of jousting’s story. Jousting is still done today, it just looks a little different. Since 1821, the Natural Chimneys Joust has been held in Mount Solon, Virginia. This makes it one of our country’s oldest continuously running sporting events. Older even, members of the jousting community contend, than that other horse related competition, the Kentucky Derby. Modern (if you can call it that) jousting, is competitive but not confrontational. Competitors take turns running their horses down an 80-yard path and, at full speed, catch small rings on the end of their lances. This sounds reasonably tame until you see how small the rings are: one inch in diameter for the best jousters. Each jouster gets three runs down the course and the one who catches the most rings after three attempts win. If there is a tie after the three runs, the remaining jousters move to single elimination runs, like a soccer shootout after the first five shots. During these ride-offs, the rings get progressively smaller. To break particularly insistent ties, rings the size of life-saver candies can be used.

The jousting community is tight-knight and multi-generational. Andrew Jenner‘s descriptions of “Zula Casady, the 91-year-old matriarch of the Natural Chimneys Joust” and her family were my favorite parts of his article The Fading Glory of America’s (Allegedly) Oldest Sporting Event in Modern Farmer. This article is what led me down the path of jousting discovery and I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it too.

From rural to urban and from Virginia to South Korea we go for our next strange sport: spacing out. That’s right, there was a tournament held in Seoul, South Korea recently that crowned a nine-year old as its champion. The various athletes who decided to enter the competition had to sit or lie or sprawl for three hours with no access to smart phones or other technology. According to Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku, organizers would “go around and check people’s heart rate or try to make them laugh to see who, in fact, was truly spaced out.” Jeanne Kim, writing for Quartz, relayed a statement from one of the organizers of the tournament: “Because of smart devices, we are unable to escape from external stimulation even for a moment. In such a society, I wanted to contemplate the idea of not doing anything.”

I don’t know about you, but I think this sport is a great idea. I’d love to participate! Watching it… now that’s another story. I doubt it would make for a very good spectator sport, although this one minute youtube clip is delightful. Enjoy!