Category: Understanding Sports

Summer Olympics: All About Badminton

All About Badminton

For most people who grew up in the United States, badminton is a sport played in middle school gym classes or lawn parties. It is to tennis what wiffleball is to baseball. Globally, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In Asia, particularly China, badminton is a deadly serious sport. Olympic badminton moves at a lightning pace, often faster than the uneducated eye can see.

How Does Badminton Work?

“Badminton is played by two or four people on a small rectangular indoor court split down the middle on the long edge of the court with a five foot tall net. Each player has a light racquet with a strung head like a tennis racquet. Instead of a ball, the game is played with a shuttlecock. The shuttlecock is a “”a high-drag projectile, with an open conical shape”” according to Wikipedia. In English, this means that it looks like a bunch of darts whose points are all gathered up in a little round rubber nose. The peculiarity of the shuttlecock gives badminton its curious look. Players wind up and swing with all their might at the shuttlecock. This propels it very quickly for a short distance before it begins to decelerate. This deceleration gives opposing players a chance, if they can react quickly enough, to return the shuttlecock.

Matches consist of a best two out of three series of games, each of which is played to 21 points with players having to win by two. Each point ends when the shuttlecock hits the ground — unlike tennis, no bounces are allowed.”

Why do People Like Watching Badminton?

Badminton is enjoyable on a number of levels. First is the mildly humorous one that many American viewers approach it with. It’s kind of like race walking (more on that later) in that it’s funny to see people so good and so serious about something that lots of people do without considering it a sport. Once you get past that, the enjoyment comes from the way players handle the strangely shaped shuttlecock. Most sports are played with a ball or puck designed to make it go as fast and hard as possible. Only badminton, that I can think of, is played with a ball designed to go slow. This perversity is enjoyable to watch in much the same way a fumble in football is enjoyable to watch as players struggle to pick it up.

Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:

What are the different events?

Like tennis, Badminton has singles events for men and women and doubles events for men, women, and mixed gender pairs.

How Dangerous is Badminton?

Badminton is quite safe. As humorous as the thought of getting an eye injury from an errant shuttlecock is, most badminton injuries come from turning an ankle or knee or over-swinging for a shot and straining a shoulder or elbow.

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Badminton?

Very good. 38 singles women competitors and 40 singles men badminton players qualified for the Olympics. Equal numbers for doubles also qualified. So, no big disparity in entrants and no, as far as I could tell, difference in rules or equipment.

Links!

Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Badminton is from Thursday, August 11 to Saturday, August 20.

Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.

Summer Olympics: All About Modern Pentathlon

All About Modern Pentathlon

The Olympics are a human tradition that goes back to ancient Greece but they’re also very much a product of late 19th century Europe. No event expresses this modern origin better than the Modern Pentathlon, a combination of thoroughly upper class Victorian European activities.

How Does Modern Pentathlon Work?

The modern pentathlon combines five skills into a single event: swimming, show jumping on horses, fencing, running, and pistol shooting. Scores are accumulate throughout the first thee skills: a 200 meter freestyle swim, a show jumping exhibition, and a epee fencing tournament. The cumulative score from those activities gets turned into a ranked list which defines when each athlete starts the final combined run and pistol shooting competition. This combined competition requires athletes to run 800 meters, shoot five targets, and then repeat four times. The genius aspect of using the earlier standings to stagger the start of the combined competition is that the person who finishes the run/shoot first is the overall winner. Another clever aspect of the modern pentathlon is that athletes are paired with a horse randomly 20 minutes before taking part in the show jumping competition. This is a far cry from normal equestrian events when athlete and horse practice together, sometimes for years before the Olympics.

Why do People Like Watching Modern Pentathlon?

One of my favorite stories about sports that I’ve learned over the past few years comes from David Epstein’s book, The Sports Gene. In it, he describes “the big bang of sports bodies” that happened during the 1930s. Before that time, the people who ran sports on a national and international level believed that there was basically an ideal body for sports (unsurprisingly a medium sized European man) and that a person possessing that body should be the best at virtually everything. The modern pentathlon clearly stems from that time. Because we now know that there’s an ideal body type for swimming (long torso, big hands and feet) and that it’s different from the ideal body type for running (long legs, very small torso), it’s in some ways extra entertaining to watch a sport that forces people to compete in different sports and rewards versatility.

Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:

What are the different events?

The modern pentathlon is confusing enough with its five components, that it’s a relief to know it only has two events: men’s and women’s.

How Dangerous is Modern Pentathlon?

Well, let’s see. Swimming is pretty safe, as is running. The shooting is done with lasers, not bullets, so we’re good there. Fencing with epees is going to leave some marks, but no real damage should be done most of the time. Nope, the most dangerous sport in the modern pentathlon by far is the show jumping. Anything on a horse, particularly jumping over barriers, is dangerous! You can get pretty hurt falling off a horse and the pentathlon turns up the difficulty level by asking athletes to compete on well-trained but unfamiliar horses.

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Modern Pentathlon?

Perfect — 36 men and 36 women.

Links!

Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Modern pentathlon is from Friday, August 19 to Saturday, August 20.

Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.

Summer Olympics: All About Weightlifting

All About Weightlifting

Along with “who can run the fastest”, “who can throw the farthest”, and “who can fight better”, who can lift the heaviest object seems like one of the oldest questions in human civilization. No surprise then, that an Olympic event still seeks to answer it.

How Does Weightlifting Work?

Olympic weightlifting consists of two types of lifts, the snatch, and the clean and jerk. To complete a snatch lift, athletes need to lift the barbell and extend it above their head in a single, smooth motion. The clean and jerk has lifters bringing the barbell up to their chest and then pausing there before extending it above their head. Before each of the lifting disciplines begins, all the lifters choose the weight they will begin attempting. The lifts go in order from lightest to heaviest. Weightlifters have three chances to successfully complete each lift. If they fail, they can choose to try again later on at the same weight or a higher one. If they succeed in fewer than three attempts, they can also choose to go up in weight on a subsequent attempt. In the end, the person who has lifted the highest number of combined pounds successfully wins the competition.

Why do People Like Watching Weightlifting?

First of all, watching other people strain to lift heavy weights is way better than actually doing it yourself. You could get hurt! Seriously though, I enjoy watching weight lifting. There’s an inherent enjoyment derived from seeing people with such extreme body-types do something they’ve molded themselves to be ideal for. In terms of tactics, weightlifting is simple but psychologically compelling. If you choose a weight that is too heavy for you, you can’t try again at a lower weight — you can only repeat a lift at the same or a higher weight. But, if you choose a weight that’s too easy for you, it still may tire you out enough that you fail at a higher weight you would otherwise have succeeded at. So, the goal is to walk the line very carefully between too heavy but do-able and actually too heavy. Add the pressure of the Olympics and it’s an event ripe for drama.

Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:

What are the different events?

There are 15 weightlifting events, organized by weight (of the athlete) and gender (also of the athlete). The eight weight classes for men start at 123 lbs and end at over 231 lbs. The seven women’s weight classes start at 105 lbs and end at over 165 lbs. Each event contains the snatch and the clean and jerk lifts.

How Dangerous is Weightlifting?

Gosh, it looks incredibly dangerous to me. For the Summer Olympics, which per person seem to be safer by far than the Winter Olympics, I would say that weightlifting is moderately dangerous. Beyond the risk of dropping the weights on yourself, there’s always the chance of tearing something as you strain to the limit or beyond.

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Weightlifting?

It’s usually a bad sign when there are more events for one gender (almost always men) than there are for another. However, in this case, it seems as though the extra weight class for men is a reflection of the wider diversity in male weightlifter’s weights than in women’s. The women’s weight classes are already separated by one less kilogram the men’s in order to get close to an equal number of events. Further narrowing the gap would be one way of fixing this, but it might also have negative consequences if the results became more about who could cut the most weight as opposed to who can lift the most weight. This sport should be about lifting, not cutting.

Links!

Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Weightlifting is from Saturday, August 6 to Tuesday, August 16.

Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.

Summer Olympics: All About Fencing

All About Fencing

Fencing is what happens when a type of fighting, in the process of becoming obsolete, takes a detour and goes down the road of extreme codification that leads inevitably to sport. Fencing is sword fighting with unfathomably complicated rules where no one gets hurt.

How Does Fencing Work?

As you might figure, the point of fencing is to hit the other person with the pointy end before they hit you. (Shout out to all my Game of Thrones peeps out there.) The problem is, Olympic level fencers quite often hit each other at virtually the same time. One solution to this is to put electronic sensors in the swords and the clothing of the fencers. That way, a computer can figure out who hit first when the swords are moving too fast for the eye to see… which is almost all the time. Unfortunately, even electronic sensors can’t tell a lot of the time. So, a complicated set of rules was invented. Without delving too far into these, it’s safe to say that the rules generally favor the more aggressive fencer. If one fencer is on the attack, they will get the point when there is a simultaneous hit.

Why do People Like Watching Fencing?

There’s little doubt about the popularity of sword fighting as a spectator sport. Fencing, on the other hand, is a little more challenging. I imagine a lot of people tune in to fencing to see swashbuckling of the sort they are used to seeing in television shows or movies. You know what I mean, attractive muscly people swinging swords slowly at each other and sustaining attractively placed shallow cuts on just the right parts of their faces or arms. Olympic fencing is not that. The swords often move too quickly to see, and hits happen so fast and simultaneously, that unless you’re an expert in fencing and have amazing eye-sight, you probably can’t see them. Instead of watching the swords, spend some time watching just the feet and legs of the fencers. Divorced from their upper bodies, fencers lower bodies look as though they are engaged in an athletic, balletic, and deadly dance.

Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:

What are the different events?

Fencing has three disciplines, each tied to a different weapon with different rules. Foil has skinny, flexible swords that you can only score with if you hit the point of the blade on the torso of an opponent. Sabre has a slightly shorter, lighter blade with a larger hand-guard. This is because the entire weapon, not just the point, may be used to strike at the entire upper body of an opponent. Epee blades are heavier and stiffer. Epee is kind of a throw-back event, the closest to “real” sword fighting. The entire body is a target, and, unlike in the other two events, there are no right-of-way rules. In epee, if two fencers hit each other too closely to tell who was first, both get a point. There are also team events. In 2016, men will have a team competition in foil and women in sabre.

How Dangerous is Fencing?

Fencing has freak accidents, like any other activity, but unless a sword breaks it is relatively safe. Fencing outfits may be reinforced slightly, but sabre and especially epee fighters just get used to bruising. It may not be for the weak of heart, but it’s not going to kill or badly hurt anyone.

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Fencing?

Very good, at least on the surface. Inclusion of women’s events in the Olympics were a long time coming, but they are here now. Don’t worry about the weird and non-matching team competitions. The Olympics won’t give fencing more medals, so they rotate through the different events for team competitions from one Olympics to the next.

Links!

Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Fencing is from Saturday, August 6 to Sunday, August 14 with medal events every day!

Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.

Summer Olympics: All About Archery

All About Archery

Visions of Robin Hood splitting a rival’s arrow may flash through your mind as you watch this Olympic event. At this distance, the chance of splitting an arrow is slight or, perhaps, impossible, but that won’t prevent you from imagining it happen.

How Does Archery Work?

Archery is a relatively simple sport. Line up 70 meters from a target, stand still, and shoot at it. In concentric rings, where your arrow lands determines how many points you score. The bullseye at the center is only 4.8 inches wide and an arrow there gives the archer who shot it (or their team,) ten points. The farther an arrow is from the center, the fewer points it gets. Many arrows are shot, and each score is added up. When all the arrows are gone, whoever or whichever team has the most points, wins. Archers or teams are matching in single elimination games and keep shooting as long as they keep winning matches.

Why do People Like Watching Archery?

I can’t blame you if the idea of sitting still watching other people stand still and shoot arrows seems dull. All I can say, is that Olympic archery is surprisingly mesmerising most of the time. And, if a match is close at the end, it can be surprisingly exciting. Archery is an activity that requires complete calm to succeed at, so it’s interesting to watch what happens as archers struggle to remain calm with an Olympic medal on the line.

Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:

What are the different events?

Archery has men’s and women’s individual and team events.

How Dangerous is Archery?

If you got in the way of anyone who was shooting, it would be pretty dangerous!! Otherwise, it’s completely safe.

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Archery?

Aside from the qualification target being ever-so-slightly lower for women (600 instead of 630), this sport has complete gender equality. Maybe it will be one of the first to get rid of gender all together.

Links!

Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Archery is from Friday, August 5 to Friday, August 12.

Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.

Summer Olympics: All About Table Tennis

All About Table Tennis

We all know table tennis or ping pong. It’s that game we played with our grandparents in Florida or with our friends in their basement. Forrest Gump was good at it. It’s become a mild hipster/tech favorite. No! You do not know table tennis until you watch world class table tennis, like the table tennis in the Olympics. Casual ping pong is to Olympic table tennis as a school yard fight is to World War I.

How Does Table Tennis Work?

For as different as I just described Olympic table tennis being from recreational ping pong, I have to admit the rules are basically the same. There are a few interesting wrinkles though. First, the rule of hitting the ball across the table on a diagonal during serves (like the tennis rule about serving) is only present in doubles table tennis, not singles. In singles table tennis, the serve can go anywhere once it crosses the net. That’s sneaky! There have also been a bunch of equipment changes to slow down the game so that people can enjoy it more as a spectator sport. The ball was enlarged, the paddles restricted. Games are also played to 11 with who serves switching every two points instead of the casual standard of 21 and five.

Why do People Like Watching Table Tennis?

Well, tennis is fun to watch, isn’t it? So why wouldn’t you want to watch tennis as played by GIANTS?! That’s basically what table tennis is like. It’s surprisingly athletic, but instead of running around on the court, these athletes run around the court. Shots force an opponent to lunge from side to side and sometimes even run backward or forward or dive. The mixture of speed and control required to get the paddle into the right spot but not hit the ball too hard is amazing.

Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:

 

What are the different events?

There are singles and doubles events for men and women.

How Dangerous is Diving?

Table tennis is safe!

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Diving?

The simplicity of the events (singles/doubles) make this an easy event for gender equality. What’s more, the rules are set up such that there are exactly the same number of men and women competing. Nice job table tennis!

Links!

Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Table Tennis is from Saturday, August 6 to Wednesday, August 17.

Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.

Summer Olympics: All About Diving

All About Diving

Once you’re done with the truly elemental sports — running, jumping, swimming, fighting — you get to the next level of sports. These are sports that add or combine parts of elemental sports. Diving, jumping from land into water, has its roots in that type of combination, but it’s become much, much more. Plain diving, was first an Olympic sport in 1904. By 1908, a second form of diving, called “fancy diving” had gained Olympic status. Fancy diving added acrobatics to the mix. These two forms of diving stayed separate until 1928 when the two were combined. These days, the whole transitioning from land to water thing seems like merely a footnote in the sport of diving. Divers do so many incredible, eye-catching spins, flips, and tucks in mid-air, that it seems as if they’ll never actually hit the water!

How Does Diving Work?

Diving is one of the many Olympic sports that combines aesthetics with athleticism. Dives are scored by a panel of judges who evaluate each dive based on how well executed they are. A dive has three distinct elements that are scored: the approach, the flight, and the entry. An easy way to think about this is that each phase represents the diver in a single element: land, air, and water. If the diver has to deal with fire, something is very wrong. Of the three, the easiest to watch as a casual observer is the entry. The bigger the splash a diver makes, the worse they have done. This usually corresponds with another element of the entry — how vertical they are when they enter the water. Because it’s hard to know what a diver is trying to do in the air, it’s harder to know how well they have performed in the flight. The eleven judges don’t have this problem, both because they are experienced and expert viewers of the sport and also because all the divers must submit their dives before-hand. There is no free-lancing allowed. As in other similar sports, there is a balance between execution and technical difficulty. A well executed very difficult dive may score better than a perfectly executed easier one. In synchronized diving, where two divers execute a dive simultaneously, a fourth element is added into the mix — how closely one diver mirrors the other.

Why do People Like Watching Diving?

Grace in the air, precision timing, tumbling athleticism, chiseled minimalist bodies, and even more minimalist swim suits. What’s not to like? Plus, it’s the only sport where competitors get to chill out in a hot tub before and after their performances!

Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:

What are the different events?

Diving has two different apparatuses, a traditional semi-flexible diving board, like the kind you see at your local pool. In olympic competition, this is called a springboard and is three meters off the ground. There is also a concrete platform to dive off of which is 10 meters (more than three stories!) high. Each apparatus has an individual event for each sex and a synchronized event. Although the individual events are more high-profile, the synchronized events may be more impressive. As hard as it is to believe anyone can perform tumbling acrobatic olympic dives, it’s even more amazing that two people can do it simultaneously.

How Dangerous is Diving?

Despite involving leaping and tumbling in such a way that a diver’s head passes within inches of the diving board or platform, diving tends not to be particularly dangerous for international quality athletes. Even the 10 meter platform, which would be horrifying to leap off of for most of us, is not normally a problem. When injuries do happen, they can be very scary. No one who was watching Greg Louganis’ famous head injury (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5nqeFWufrE) will forget it.

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Diving?

Quite good. Countries may bring up to sixteen divers with no more than eight of them being mon or women. The diving events are the same for men and women and they are judged identically. Plus, the men’s swim suits are as or more skimpy than the women’s!

Links!

Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Diving is from Sunday, August 7 to Saturday, August 20.

Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.

Why do sports fans like injuries? Are they evil?

Dear Sports Fan,

My partner seems to really enjoy when an athlete gets hurt playing their sport. Usually it’s when it’s an opponent but sometimes even a player on the team he roots for. What’s up with that? Why do sports fans like injuries? Are they evil?

Thanks,
Violet

Dear Violet,

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot over the past couple of weeks, since the National Hockey League (NHL) playoffs started. Even though I’ve been a hockey fan for over twenty years now, the intensity, violence, and sheer excitement of the playoffs surprises me every year. Injuries are one of the most noticeable ways in which the playoff games differ from the regular season games. Hockey playoffs are set up as best four game out of seven series between two teams. During the course of one of these playoff series, the injury rate for players seems to approach 100%. Just off the top of my head, from the series I was following most closely, I can think of countless times when players got hit in the face with sticks or with the puck, injuries resulting from players blocking shots and taking the puck off a unpadded or insufficiently padded area, twisted knees, and crunched shoulders. And of course, the dreaded specter of concussions looms over hockey as it does every collision sport.

All of these things happen during regular season hockey games but not nearly as often as they do during the playoffs. Your question begs me to consider my love for the playoffs and their higher rate of injury — am I a masochist? or is there another reason for enjoying seeing other people get hurt?

Over the years on this blog, I’ve suggested that one of the primary and primal reasons why people love watching sports is because they enjoy watching other people do things they absolutely could never do themselves. In this case, I think there’s another similar rationale that comes into play. People love watching sports because they enjoy watching other people do things they absolutely would never do themselves. The thrill of watching other people in danger and the admiration of our sport heroes courage are palpable. A hockey player who slides in front of a 100 mph slap shot, risking broken bones, smashed teeth, or worse simply to prevent his goalie from needing to make a save is doing something as unthinkable to most sports fans as LeBron James dunking a basketball or Bryce Harper hitting a home run. The distance between us and the hockey player is simply mental, not physical. Hockey injuries are a visual reminder of the mental distance between NHL players and normal fans.

The other aspect of enjoying injuries, especially in hockey, is that they, and how quickly hockey players return to play from suffering them, are a testament to how much hockey players care about winning. Sports fans live with the constant nagging fear that in the entire ecosystem of sports, they care more than the owners, coaches, general managers, players, and media members. It’s okay to be the person who cares the most about something, but when you care the most and have the least control over the outcome of something, you’re generally the rube. The way that hockey players play in the playoffs — recklessly, relentlessly, and despite injury — shows that they care just as much as the fans.

So, the next time your partner gets excited by blood dripping onto the ice, just know that he sees that as a sign that his passion is matched by the players he roots for and that he is admiring someone for doing something he would never, ever do.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What do I need to know about football and Super Bowl 50?

Who, when, how?

Super Bowl 50 between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers is at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 7. It will be televised on CBS and streamed for free on CBS.com. For background on the Denver Broncos history, read this post. For background on the history of the Carolina Panthers franchise, read this post.

What’s the plot of Super Bowl 50?

Virtually everyone you talk to thinks that the Carolina Panthers are going to win and win easily. Why is that? What makes people so sure that the Broncos won’t be able to do much when they have the ball? How can anyone be so confident that the Broncos defense, which has been the best in the league all year, won’t be able to stymie the Carolina offense so completely as to win the game themselves? Is the conventional wisdom right this time? Find out in our plot post.

Who are the key characters of Super Bowl 50 on the Carolina Panthers?

Read about quarterback Cam Newton and the issues of race that have plagued, surrounded, and elevated him throughout his career. Then read about how head coach Ron Rivera’s reputation changed from a boring failure to a radical success. Meet some key members of the Panthers extraordinary defense including a defensive lineman who grew up in Tonga, a linebacker who will be playing two weeks after breaking his arm, and the newest star in the league, defensive back Josh Norman.

Who are the key characters of Super Bowl 50 on the Denver Broncos?

Learn about legendary quarterback Peyton Manning and how close his story is to mimicking that of former Broncos quarterback and now team president, John Elway. The Broncos’ connections to the past continue in our examination of head coach Gary Kubiak, who spent his entire playing career as a backup quarterback in Denver. Meet some key members of the (perhaps) even more extraordinary defense on the Broncos including a colossal defensive lineman, a swashbuckling linebacker, and a bruising defensive back.

How can I quickly study up on football in time for the Super Bowl?

We have a ton of content on Dear Sports Fan for learning football. Some of it is available in a couple email correspondence courses, Football 101 an Football 201: Positions. I encourage you to sign up for those, but they won’t help very much if you’ve got a Super Bowl party to go to today. Instead, you can read up on some of the basics right now!

I also wrote an epic series on brain injuries in football a year ago, culminating with my suggestion on how to fix the game. You can find my suggestion, with links to all the previous posts here.

However you choose to enjoy the game today, do it with curiosity and kindness,
Ezra Fischer

Super Bowl 50 – What's the plot? Who is going to win?

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the biggest sporting event in the United States. This year, the game is between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and will be held at 6:30 on Sunday, February 7 and televised on CBS. Watching any football game is more fun if you understand who the key characters are and what compelling plots and sub-plots there are. It also helps to know some of the basic rules of how football works. Dear Sports Fan is here to help you with both! For learning the basics of football, start with Football 101 and work up to Football 201. To learn about the characters and plot, read on and stay tuned for more posts throughout the week.

What’s the plot of Super Bowl 50?

The Panthers are expected to win. For a Super Bowl which matches the top seeds in each conference or half of the NFL, and therefore should be a relatively even match-up, this belief is remarkably widely held. One way of telling this is to look at the line Vegas set for the game and what happened to it. If you’re not someone who understands football betting, this post provides good background. The line opened (was first set) with Carolina as a three point favorite, suggesting that Vegas thought Carolina was three points better than Denver. Over the two weeks between when this line was set and now, so many people bet so much money on Carolina, that they actually moved the line so that Carolina was favored by five or five and a half points. Remember that the goal of a line-setter is to get half the money on each team so that no matter who wins, the bookies can basically pay the winners on one side with money from the losers on the other and pocket the transaction fees from both sides. When too much money comes in on one side, like it did for Carolina, Vegas will move the line so that it’s more favorable to bet on the team getting fewer bets. Even if you think Carolina is going to win the game, it’s much more attractive to bet on them when they only have to win by four points (Carolina by three means they need to win by four for a bet on them to pay out) than when they have to win by six points for you to win. The line moving so far is a sure sign that most people think that Carolina is going to win fairly easily. So, why are people so sure? We’ll examine the game in two phases — when Denver has the ball and when Carolina does — and try to explain the challenges Denver faces on both sides.

Denver’s offense is likely to struggle against Carolina for one main reason: their quarterback, Peyton Manning, is a shell of his former self. Manning is 39 years old, near-ancient for a football player, and he had neck surgery a few years ago. This has left him with a severely under-powered arm (for an NFL quarterback, for a normal person, he’s still a super hero,) and with little to no feeling in the fingers of his throwing arm. That he’s able to play at all is incredible but it doesn’t change the fact that his shortcomings will become his team’s shortcomings. Manning finds it difficult to throw deep down the field to his wide receivers. Alas, that’s the strength of one of his top two receivers, Demarius Thomas who is now less effective. More importantly, opposing defenses know Manning is less effective throwing downfield than he used to be, and they set themselves up accordingly. The Panthers, who also have one of the best one-on-one defenders in the league, won’t waste too many players defending deep passes. This leaves them free to concentrate on stopping or limiting the effectiveness of the two other things an offense can do: run and pass short. Carolina’s defense is hell on offenses trying to do these things at the best of times, but they’ll be downright Cerberus-like against a team they know can only do these things. Carolina has two excellent giant defensive tackles who will disrupt the Broncos running game, mostly by making it impossible for Denver’s offensive line to create clear areas for their running back to sneak through. When a running back does sneak through or when the Broncos circumvent the Panthers linemen by completing a short pass, the ball-carrier is unlikely to get far because of the Panthers swift linebackers who will flow toward the ball-carrier during this game with a ferocity and speed matched only by you or me headed toward the chip and dip at our Super Bowl parties. It’s hard to imagine Denver scoring many points on offense because it’s hard to imagine how they’ll find ways to gain more than five to seven yards on any single play.

Denver has made up for their deficits on offense all year by having the best defense in the league. Alas for Denver supporters, it seems like Carolina was designed specifically to thwart everything Denver is best at on defense. Denver excels at attacking their opposition’s quarterback. They’ve been able to hit, tackle, sack, and fluster almost every quarterback they’ve come across. They haven’t played anyone like Carolina’s quarterback Cam Newton though. Newton is not only enormous (6’5″ 245 lbs) but he’s also a normally unflappable person on the best streak of his career. If that weren’t enough, he is also an expert executor of the “read-option” offense. This tactic looks like a normal running play but gives the quarterback the option to look at how the defenders are reacting (read them) and then decide (because they have the option) to hand the ball off to the running back or keep it himself and run or throw it. At best, this tactic slows down opposing defenders. At worst, it leaves them bewildered and frozen in their tracks. Having the read-option in their back pocket and a physical, unflappable quarterback to run it, will make Carolina resistant to Denver’s defensive edge rushers. Denver has also been able to shut down opposing wide receivers all year with their combination of great defensive backs. Unfortunately, Carolina’s best pass-catcher is not a wide receiver, but a tight end — Greg Olsen. Denver did a great job on New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski in their last game but it is an area they’ve been (relatively) vulnerable to all year. Denver still has a great defense that will find ways to make life hard for Carolina, but because of how Carolina’s offense works, they will be less affected than nearly any other team would be.

Who is going to win?

Usually there’s more suspense at this point in the post (and the football season,) but given the thrust of this article, it’s hard to generate much. The Carolina Panthers are going to win. I just hope the Broncos can put up enough of a fight to make the game interesting! I think they will. Their formidable defense will find ways to frustrate Carolina’s offense, who it must be admitted, have not faced much adversity so far this year. Given a few lucky bounces and perhaps a lucky injury or two, the Broncos could just sneak through and find a way to win in a low scoring game… but they won’t. Panthers 22, Broncos 16.