Pitch that game: NFL Week 5, 2015

Hello everyone and welcome to America’s favorite game show that… has never actually happened before and no one has heard of it… it’s Pitch That Game!

Here’s how it works. As your host, I have one minute to pitch a sporting event to someone who is not a sports fan. If, after my pitch, they’re interested in watching, I get a point! That’s it! Why would we play such a game? Well, it’s a good way to quickly learn about a set of games to see if you’re interested in following any of them. It’s also a great way for me to learn from you about what may or may not make a sport interesting to a layperson.

In this episode, I pitch you, the listener, all 14 of the NFL games this weekend, on Sunday October 4 and Monday October 5. If you want to know which games will be available on your TV this weekend, check out 506 Sports NFL. If you need help figuring out how to make sense out of what you see there, use my explanation of how to use 506 Sports NFL here.

Enjoy the show!

Sunday, October 11, 2015 1 p.m. ET

Buffalo Bills at Tennessee Titans

Back in the good old days on the NFL, quarterbacks were expected to spend several years on the bench, learning from coaches and more established quarterbacks before getting their chance to start. In the past fifteen years, that practice has broken down in favor of high-profile college quarterbacks who come straight out of college and start from their first professional game. This game offers a chance to compare models. The Titans quarterback, Marcus Mariota, is one of those highly regarded rookies starting right away. The Bills quarterback, Tyrod Taylor, is a rare modern example of a quarterback who spent his first four years in the league as a backup and is only now getting a chance to start. Both players have played very well this year and I expect that to continue today.

Cleveland Browns at Baltimore Ravens

If you’ve followed the NFL even casually over the last fifteen years, you probably think of the Cleveland Browns franchise as the epitome of ineptitude and the Ravens as a model franchise. What you might not know is that the Ravens came into existence in 1996 when the then owner of the Cleveland Browns decided to move his team to Baltimore. As part of a settlement with the league, the city of Cleveland got to keep the Browns name and was promised a new expansion team to take the old Browns place within a few years. The Browns returned to Cleveland in 1999 but have seemed star-crossed ever since. It’s no wonder that fans of the new Browns love to hate the Ravens.

Chicago Bears at Kansas City Chiefs

This game features a pair of tragic figures at the quarterback position. The Chiefs quarterback, Alex Smith, has football figured out. He knows where and when to throw the ball and who to, but he often doesn’t have the arm strength to deliver the ball the way it needs to be delivered. The Bears quarterback, Jay Cutler, is the exact opposite. He once claimed to have the strongest arm in NFL history. He might, but it’s paired with a lack of awareness, both about football and his own ability, that leads him to make costly mistakes all too often.

Seattle Seahawks at Cincinnati Bengals

It’s sometimes said that the NFL stands for “not for long.” This clever backronym describes how difficult it is to maintain consistent excellence. The Seahawks have been to the last two Super Bowls and made the playoffs in all but three of the last dozen seasons. That’s an almost unprecedented stretch of success. It looks like it may finally have caught up to them this year. They’re fighting the drop-off though. After starting 0-2, they won two close games to even their record at two wins and two losses. They’ll face a tough battle in this game against the undefeated Bengals who look as unbeatable as their record would suggest.

St. Louis Rams at Green Bay Packers

The Rams traveled to Arizona last weekend and gave the then undefeated Arizona Cardinals their first loss of the year. They’ll be trying to do the same thing to the Packers in this game. The Packers are 4-0 and seemingly invincible, thanks to the quarterbacking mastery of Aaron Rodgers. The best way to neutralize a great quarterback like Rodgers is to get in his face from the very start of the game, something the Rams may be able to do thanks to their excellent defensive linemen, and to keep him off the field. The way to keep him off the field is to run the ball effectively on offense, another thing the Rams may be able to do. Todd Gurley, a rookie running back on the Rams, made his season debut last weekend and looked, no joke, like the best running back to enter the league since Adrian Peterson in 2007.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Jaguars had a giant opportunity last weekend to announce themselves to the world as a respectable team by beating the Indianapolis Colts but they couldn’t do it. Now they’re 1-3 for the year and stuck in a swampy South Florida game against the Buccaneers, also 1-3 and going nowhere. That said, this could be a high scoring game – both teams are much stronger at wide receiver then they are at defensive back – the people assigned to keep the wide receivers from catching the ball. I expect both teams to be able to move the ball down the field in big, thrilling chunks.

New Orleans Saints at Philadelphia Eagles

These have been two of the most exciting offensive teams for years. They both base their play around frequent safe but crafty short passes which get athletic skilled wide receivers and running backs the ball with space to run around and make defenders look silly. It’s a good strategy but it hasn’t been working so far this year. Both teams have only won one game out of the four they’ve each played. A 2-3 record in the first five games isn’t the end of the world but 1-4 is. Therefore, the fate of the world, for both of these teams, rests on this game and this game alone.

Washington Redskins at Atlanta Falcons

The Atlanta Falcons are 4-0 so far this year, so you think everyone on the team would be thrilled. Not so. Veteran wide receiver Roddy White went public with his profanity-laced frustration about having a reduced role this year. It sounds unsporting to be upset when your team is winning, but I can understand how he feels. Imagine you spent 10 years at a job and finally, just when the company start really succeeding -maybe it’s going to go public or something – your boss decides you’re not good enough anymore and starts phasing you out. Yikes. Often, after a player goes to the media with his frustration, his team will make sure he gets the ball a bunch in the next game. If that doesn’t happen, White should think about editing his resume and brushing up on his LinkedIN game.

Sunday, October 11, 2015 4:05 or 4:25 p.m. ET

Arizona Cardinals at Detroit Lions

It’s hard to sell a matchup between a 3-1 team, the Arizona Cardinals, and a 0-4 team, the Detroit Lions, as likely to be an even or close game. What I can sell you on is that there’s a good reason to root for both of these teams. The Cardinals are a lovable group — with their coach, who wears a kangol hat and speaks more honestly about his team to the press than virtually any other coach in the league and their quarterback whose excellent career has been sidetracked by injury every time it seems like it’s about to peak. The Lions, on the other hand, are coming off one of the more brutal losses this season. Their best player had the ball and was lunging into the end-zone when an opposing defender knocked it out of his hands. That’s bad luck and a good play by the defender, but the controversy started when another defender seemed to intentionally bat the ball out of play. That’s not allowed and the Lions should have had another chance to score, but the referees seemed to momentarily forget the rules and the Lions lost the game.

New England Patriots at Dallas Cowboys

If you’re a Patriots fan, you’re either from New England, or you enjoy watching one team thoroughly out-smart another. The Patriots are coming off their bye week which means they’ve had an extra week to think of devious ways to win and, as a bonus, make the Cowboys look stupid. I can’t wait to see what they’ve cooked up.

Denver Broncos at Oakland Raiders

This was once the most hotly contested rivalry in the NFL. Then the Raiders sank into a twenty year-long slump and it lost a little of its luster. This year, for the first time in memory, the Raiders look like they may have improved enough to bring interest back to the game. On the field, the Raiders will have a tough time surviving the Broncos aggressive defense who sacked their opposition’s quarterback seven times last week.

Sunday, October 4, 2015 8:30 p.m. ET

San Francisco 49ers at New York Giants

No one expects the San Francisco 49ers to win this game on national television. They’re widely considered one of the worst teams in the league, their once promising quarterback is struggling, and their defense is missing most of its best players. They haven’t won a game since the very first weekend of the season when they were… hey, wait a minute… they were on national television, they were considered one of the worst teams in the league, their quarterback was struggling, and their defense was missing most of its best players. Hmm. Maybe this game will be closer than we think.

Monday, October 12, 2015 8:30 p.m. ET

Pittsburgh Steelers at San Diego Chargers

Football is an extremely complex game. Every player on the field is responsible for knowing and reacting to a slightly different set of data. Only the best players truly master their own positions. That’s why it’s so extraordinary for a player to have a command of their position and their teammates and act on it. That’s what Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers was doing last week. So many of his offensive linemen were injured and missing, that he was doing the seeing and reacting for the replacements. Before every play, Rivers would put himself in the lineman’s position, see what an experienced player in that position would see, and shout out the reaction they would have. Then he had to do the calculations for his own position and start the play. It was a virtuoso performance and one that had a lot to do with his team winning their game. Watch for him to do the same in this game.

Why is tonight's USA vs. Mexico men's soccer game so big?

When the United States Men’s National Soccer Team (USMNT) plays against Mexico tonight, it will be one of the biggest non-World Cup games in memory. I’ll be watching, starting at 9:30 p.m. on Fox Sports 1, and I encourage you to do the same. Of course, just saying it’s an important game shouldn’t be enough to get you interested, so I’m going to try to explain why it’s so big in this post.

The CONCACAF Gold Cup is the biggest men’s soccer tournament in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. In it, teams from all over those regions compete every two years to determine which country is the best. It’s an important tournament for world rankings but even more so for continental bragging rights. In the 26 years (13 tournaments) since the Gold Cup began, Mexico or the United States has won the cup all but once. Mexico has won it seven times, the United States five times, and Canada surprised the world and won it in 2000. Must have been some kind of Y2K bug. In the two most recent tournaments, the United States won once (in 2013) and Mexico won once (this year). This is pertinent, because that split over the past two tournaments is why Mexico and the United States are playing tonight.

The Confederations Cup is another international soccer tournament. This one happens every four years. It’s a small tournament, only eight teams, and highly exclusive. The only way to get an invitation is to win one of FIFA’s regional championships, like the CONCACAF Gold Cup. There are six of these tournaments throughout the world. The other two teams invited are the current World Cup champions and the next country to host the World Cup. The tournament is offset from the World Cup by a year (the next World Cup is in 2018, the next Confederations Cup is in 2017) and is hosted by the host of that World Cup. It’s almost like a dress rehearsal for the World Cup. Playing in the Confederations Cup is important to countries like the United States and Mexico because it offers a rare chance to play in a World Cup-like atmosphere against the best teams in the world without quite the same unbearable pressure that the actual World Cup brings.

There have been two Gold Cups since the last Confederations Cup. The United States won one and Mexico won one. So, in order to determine which country should be invited to the Confederations Cup in Russia, the teams will play a single playoff game tonight. Win and book your tickets to Russia for the 2017 Confederations Cup. Lose and go home.

If those stakes weren’t enough on their own to make this a big game, there’s also a long-held and simmering once again rivalry between Mexico and the United States in men’s soccer. The general arc of the rivalry is this: Mexico was the undisputed power in CONCACAF forever, until around the mid 1990s when the United States started to challenge them a bit. Then, in the 2000s, the United States seemed to surpass Mexico, which was the cause of much gloating on the U.S. side and much angst on the Mexican side. Now things have settled in to a murky stalemate. Neither team is as good as they once were and both sides have a strange mixture of existential pessimism and swagger. Leading up to this game, the Mexican TV station Azteca ran a frankly hysterical advertisement with clips of Donald Trump, whose idiotic comments about Mexico are well known, interspersed with pictures of Mexican soccer players doing awesome stuff. This was pretty great — it stirred the rivalry up while also bringing soccer fans on both sides together, since even the most partisan U.S. fan should be able to see the humor and irony in the ad. Then, just a few days ago, Fox Sports 1, which is televising the match, ran their own ad featuring Trump. This pro-U.S. ad comes across as jingoistic and arrogant and has been widely criticized. It’s unlikely that Fox’s misfire will mean much to the players but it’s equally unlikely that they needed any more motivation to bring the simmering rivalry to a roiling boil tonight.

If you want to learn more about the USA vs. Mexico men’s soccer rivalry, I recommend these two oral histories from ESPN and MLS Soccer.

 

What is a hockey assist?

Dear Sports Fan,

I was playing basketball the other day and one of my teammates complimented me on a “nice hockey assist.” I know that an assist is the pass right before someone makes a shot. What is a hockey assist?

Thanks,
Conrad

Dear Conrad,

A hockey assist refers to a pass that led to a pass that led to a goal or basket. It’s called a hockey assist because hockey is the only one of the major sports to credit players for it in basic official statistics. A hockey player who passes the puck to a teammate who scores is given an assist. A hockey player who passes the puck to a teammate who passes the puck to a teammate who scores is also credited with an assist. To distinguish the two types of assists, the first one is called a primary assist and the other is called a secondary assist. What the hockey world calls a secondary assist, the rest of the world calls a “hockey assist.”

Every sport has a historical group of simple statistics which defined how casual fans and even insiders thought about players for a long time. Examining the statistics can also tell us something about the culture of the sport. In hockey, one of those basic statistics was points, calculated by adding all of that player’s goals and assists. This is perhaps simplest way to judge a player’s worth. In a player’s cumulative season or career point total, a secondary assist counts just as much as a primary one. From this, we can intuit that hockey values teamwork and spreads out credit for achievements more than most sports. This rings true considering some of hockey’s other traditions, like putting the name of every player from the championship team on the Stanley Cup, hockey’s ultimate trophy.

The hockey assist is not without its critics. In fact, a quick google search reveals people who call it a lie, pointless, and less sense than almost any other rule in sports. People need to chill out. The statistical revolution has come to every major sport and has completely revolutionized the way players are evaluated within teams. No team worth its salt is going to make player decisions on statistics as fundamental as assists or points. Furthermore, as people have become more savvy about looking for meaningful statistics in other sports, the hockey assist received some serious consideration. Here’s a great blog post by Kevin Yeung for SB Nation’s Memphis Grizzlies blog, Grizzly Bear Blues, in which he explores the hockey assist in a basketball context. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in learning more about the value of your basketball hockey assist!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Hey! The NFL has improved its handling of concussions!

The National Football League (NFL) has long been criticized for its approach to brain injuries and concussions. I’ve covered this issue and my thoughts about solving it in great detail. The league was very, very bad on the subject for a long time. It denied that concussions were a major problem. It funded compromised scientific studies to counteract the many legitimate ones which were gradually showing just how damaging brain injury is to current and retired football players. It didn’t provide sufficient health care and other benefits to retired players suffering from the effects of brain injury until forced to by a legal settlement. And on the field, the NFL’s attempts to make the game safer were met with skepticism. How can the NFL punish players for making hits they had been taught were good for their entire lives? Was it even possible to avoid hitting someone in the head in such a chaotic environment. How could the league expect to protect players who so steadfastly refused to bow down to the danger of brain injuries? That last criticism was one that rang true to me. To make it to a professional level in football – one of the world’s most team-oriented sports – you basically have to be someone who will put the success of a team before their own success. Selfish football players do not make it to the NFL. Self-sacrifice is so selected for, that it’s insane to think an NFL player won’t try to play through a brain injury to help their team, even if they know the potential danger of doing so. It felt like an intractable problem until this year, when the NFL made some changes that actually seem to be working! Here’s what they’ve done.

During each game, there are independent certified athletic trainers who are employed to watch and look for any potential head injuries. When they see one, they are empowered to stop the game in order to assess the player. If their suspicion is confirmed and the player does seem symptomatic of having had a brain injury, that player is removed from the game and (although I’m not sure this is a rule — it is the reality) does not return to play that day. Once a player has suffered a concussion, they need to go through a five step process of assessment and escalating activity before they can return to the field. That final decision is no longer in the player or team’s hands, but is controlled by an independent neurologist. Steps like this have been taken before, but they’ve never been as dramatic nor have they ever seemed to work the way this round of changes has. Players this year are staying out longer — something which is essential because of the increased risk one has of suffering a second and more damaging concussion soon after a first.

Football is still easy to criticize when it comes to player safety. Football players, especially young ones, are still dying at unacceptable levels. None of the reforms have addressed what might be the most pernicious aspect of football on its players’ brains – the near-constant sub-concussive blows that linemen experience on every play. Still, the progress I’ve seen this year is more than I expected. Not only do I think players are better protected and cared for than they have been in the past, but it’s also great to see football as a role-model among sports for once. The National Hockey League (NHL) has followed suit and given concussion spotters the ability to stop games during the season which starts tonight. Soccer authorities, (once they are bailed out of prison), should do the same.

What actually happens to the clock in the NFL when a ball carrier goes out of bounds?

Dear Sports Fan,

My friends told me that the clock stops in an NFL game when a player with the ball goes out of bounds. Now, I’m fairly new to watching football, but I’m pretty sure they’re wrong. I was watching a game this weekend and clearly saw the clock running before the next play after the ball carrier went out of bounds. Am I crazy or are they wrong? What actually happens to the clock in the NFL when a ball carrier goes out of bounds?

Thanks,
Vincent

Dear Vincent,

You’re not crazy, you’re observant. This is one of the most common misconceptions about football. 95% of football fans will say the clock stops when the ball goes out of bounds, just like your friends did. It’s not true. They are either avoiding a complex answer or they’ve never even noticed that it’s not true! Avoiding complexity is a good policy when it comes to explaining something to a beginner, but never if it results in saying something that’s not true. In this post, I’ll clear up this misconception about the NFL game clock and going out of bounds. In case you want to check the NFL rules themselves, the ones that apply to this question are here.

There are three main possibilities for how the game clock is dealt with after a play ends.

  1. It continues to run
  2. It stops until the ref places the ball on the ground in the spot where the next play should begin
  3. It stops until the next play begins

We can apply some basic rules to when each of these options applies in an NFL game.

  1. As a default, the game clock continues to run.
  2. When it may take a little while for the players and refs to untangle themselves from the result of the previous play and get back in place to start a new one, the game clock pauses until the ref gets the ball in place.
  3. When it’s likely that each second of game time is at a premium, the NFL, because it wants games to be as exciting as possible (this is an entertainment industry, after all), has created ways for smart teams to get the clock to stop after some types of plays.

Once you understand those as the three options, you can start making sense out of what seemed like an almost infinite set of possibilities, each with their own specific treatment. Here is how these principles apply to a ball-carrier going out of bounds.

If a ball carrier goes out of bounds with the ball, the game clock temporarily stops. For most of the game, the game clock restarts when the ref places the ball on the ground where the next play will begin. (Option 2) Exceptions to this are: during the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second half. During these times, the game clock is not restarted until the next play begins. (Option 3) In case you were wondering, a regular season overtime period is treated like the second half of a game, while playoff overtime periods are treated as though a new game is beginning and the first overtime period is the first quarter.

The rules that apply to the NFL game clock and going out of bounds are often simplified to, “the clock stops when the ball carrier goes out of bounds.” This misleading simplification works most of the time because it is true for most of time that fans pay attention to the clock. If it’s not in the last two minutes of the first half or the last five minutes of the second, barely anyone is paying attention to the clock at all. This is how a rule that is in place for 53 of a game’s 60 minutes can be completely missed by even the most knowledgeable football fans.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

The good and evil of baseball's Wild Card game

Major League Baseball’s Wild Card Game is a unique way to start the playoffs. This year’s two games, the New York Yankees vs. the Houston Astros in the American League and the Chicago Cubs vs. the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League, clearly represent what is good and what is evil about the Wild Card Game. The Yankees vs. Astros game has everything that’s good about the game, while the Cubs vs. Pirates game is everything that’s evil. I’ll explain what I mean by this, but first, here’s a quick reminder of how the playoffs are constructed and what the Wild Card Game is.

There are 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. These teams are broken up into two conferences of 15 teams each, the American League (AL) and National League (NL), and three divisions of five teams each. After 162 regular season games, the team with the best record within each division is declared the division winner (said to have “won the pennant”) and automatically qualifies for the playoffs. Since the goal of the playoffs is to end up with the best team from the NL playing against the best team from the AL, three teams from each league is an awkward number to have. Four would be better, because then you could have two teams play each other, and then the winner of each of those matchups play to end up with a single team. The simple way to get from three teams to four is to add a single extra team, called a Wild Card, by selecting the team with the best record in the conference that isn’t a division winner. That’s how baseball did it from 1994 to 2011. In 2012 they added a fifth team — a second Wild Card team — by selecting the team with the second best record in the conference that isn’t a division winner. Since five is also an awkward number of teams, the playoffs are designed to quickly get back down to four. The two Wild Card teams in each league play a single elimination game to decide which of them gets to be the fourth team and play a seven game series against one of the three division winners. (If you want more detail, read my full post on how the MLB playoffs work.)

The Wild Card Game is at its best when it’s between two teams like the New York Yankees and Houston Astros. The Yankees are the winningest team in baseball history. They have won 27 World Series, a whopping 16 more than the next best team. Although they are only second in the league in payroll this year, they’re famous and infamous for spending more money on players than any other team can afford or would want to afford. They’re the bullies of the league, the royalty — Darth Vadar and his army of clones. They were the first Wild Card team and would have been the only one had the system still only taken one. Playing them are the Houston Astros. The Astros are almost the complete opposite of the Yankees. They’ve been playing in MLB since 1962 and have never won a World Series. They haven’t even made the playoffs in the past decade. They have the sixth lowest payroll in the league. As a very casual baseball fan, I literally cannot name a single player on their team. They are a surprise, a heart-warming story. The Wild Card game gives the Astros a chance when they wouldn’t have had one otherwise. It creates a wonderful and dramatic spectacle. And it provides a clear rooting interest for all non-partisan fans. Why wouldn’t you want to see the Astros knock off the Yankees and stride into the playoffs? Watching this game is all upside – if the Astros win, it will be glorious; if the Yankees win, then giving the Astros an extra game didn’t cause anyone any harm. This Wild Card game is all about opportunity.

The NL Wild Card Game between the Cubs and Pirates is bad in all the ways the AL game is good. The Cubs and Pirates are both teams that are easy for unaffiliated fans to root for. The Cubs famously have not won the World Series since 1908, the longest streak of bad fortune in the league. What you might not know is that they’ve actually played in the World Series and lost seven times since then! The Pirates have won it more recently, in 1979, but haven’t been back since. Both teams are chock-full of young, talented, exciting players, like Andrew McCutchen on the Pirates and rookie phenom Kris Bryant on the Cubs. Both teams have strong-fan bases who have stuck with them through the fallow years. There are lots of reasons for neutral fans to want both teams to advance, so while this game may actually be a better baseball game than the Yankees vs. Astros, it’s far, far more insidious. There’s simply no way you’re going to watch this game and leave without your dominant feeling being one of sadness for the eliminated team. This Wild Card Game doesn’t feel like it’s about opportunity. It feels like it’s a cruel trick to play on teams that have worked so hard during a long, grueling season.

What’s the solution? A third Wild Card team? A three game Wild Card mini-series? I’m not sure. My short term-solution is to watch the AL Wild Card Game and root for the Astros but ignore the NL Wild Card Game entirely. Just tell me which team advanced and which team got screwed. As intriguing as I find both NL teams, the inevitable heartbreak is not worth the investment.

The glass ceiling isn't breaking for female coaches but there is a crack

On August 5, 2014, the San Antonio Spurs became the first National Basketball Association (NBA) team to hire a woman as a full-time coach by hiring Becky Hammon as one of their assistant coaches. On July 27, 2015, the Arizona Cardinals, a National Football League (NFL) team made similar headlines by hiring Jenn Welter to their coaching staff. Just recently, the Oakland Athletics, a team in Major League Baseball (MLB) made their mark by hiring Justine Siegal to their coaching staff. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the glass ceiling preventing women entering professional coaching as equals is breaking all over the place — across the country and across many sports. Alas, it’s not true. The hiring of Welter and Siegal by the Cardinals and Athletics are vastly different acts than that of the Spurs in hiring Hammon. They’re not comparable in any way. If anything, these lesser hirings should show us just how radical, brave, and smart the Spurs are.

Welter was hired by the Cardinals to be an “assistant coaching intern for training camp and the preseason to work with inside linebackers.” She was one of four people to work with the team’s linebackers – who are a group of around eight to 15 on teams of 53 to 90 people. Come the regular season, and Welter was gone, having served her time. Siegal is likely to have a similar experience with the Oakland As. She was hired as “a guest instructor with [the As] Instructional League team.” The Instructional League is a place for very young prospects and injured or over-the-hill veterans to play. Its season lasts only for September and October, and is separate from the core minor league system. In other words, she wasn’t hired to coach the major league Athletics nor any of their seven full-time minor league teams.

Hammon, on the other hand, is one of six full-time assistant coaches on the San Antonio Spurs bench. She has already spent a full season with the team and is entering her second year. During the summer, she was asked to head coach the Spurs Summer League team, an honor typically given to a team’s top assistant coach. She led that team to the Summer League title. As premature as this sounds, there are already speculative articles being written about Hammon’s prospects as a head coach. Given the Spurs well-established record of stability, my guess is that she’ll stay with the team for at least a few more years. The speculation isn’t unwarranted though. As you can see in this chart, four former assistant coaches under Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich and an additional three players who played for him have become head coaches in the league. If Hammon continues on the path she seems to be on, she will become a good candidate for a head coaching position.

The problem is – will anyone team have the guts to hire her? As sad as this sounds, my guess is that her only reasonable chance is to stay in San Antonio and aim to be hired as Popovich’s heir when he decides to retire. Other teams just don’t seem to be up to it. Don’t be fooled by the other high profile female hirings in sports. Any movement toward equality is a good one, but it’s important to understand that they have been small head-fakes toward equality, while the Spurs move was a full-on slam dunk.

One line to fool them all – 10.5.15

Sports talk is frequently used as a common language but it’s far from universal. If you’re someone who doesn’t follow or even understand sports, you can find yourself at a disadvantage in common small-talk situations like in an elevator, waiting for a bus, sitting at a bar, or around the proverbial water cooler at work. Even if you are a sports fan, it’s impossible to watch everything and know everything. To help in these situations, we provide lines to use when engaged in a conversation about all of the high profile sporting events of the day, plus explanations of what they mean.

NFL Football

New York Jets 27 vs. Miami Dolphins 14 in London

Line: The Philbin watch is on.

What it means: Joe Philbin is the Miami Dolphins head coach. Although by the time you’re reading this, he could be their former coach. Rumors were flying last week that if the Dolphins lost their game in London against the Jets, the team may fire Philbin. They lost. Fans are watching to see if he gets fired.

New York Giants 24 at Buffalo Bills 10

Line: Live by the Rex, die by the Rex.

What it means: When the Buffalo Bills got off to a hot start this season, new head coach Rex Ryan got a lot of the credit. He’s known for being a defensive mastermind and someone who players absolutely love playing for. His teams are also known for getting a little too amped up, which sometimes — maybe always — leads them into taking too many penalties and making other mistakes. That was the story today in the Bills game against the Giants. In the last two weeks, they’ve taken 31 penalties for 275 yards. Eeek.

Carolina Panthers 37 at Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23

Line: Pump the breaks on crowning the undefeated Panthers. Their opponents are a combined 3-12.

What it means: After four wins in the first four games of the season, Panthers fans are feeling pretty good about their team. As they should. But it’s not like they’ve played a very difficult schedule. The four teams they’ve played so far this year have won only three games combined and lost 12. So, perhaps we should wait and see for a few more weeks before we declare the Panthers to be a great team.

Oakland Raiders 20 at Chicago Bears 22

Line: There’s life in Chicago!

What it means: Bears fans weren’t expecting very much from their team this year, but after starting the season with three losses in three weeks, they were nearing a catatonic state. To have been beaten at home by the up-and-coming-but-still-lowly Oakland Raiders might have pushed some Bears fans over the edge. The Bears victory doesn’t suggest any sort of reawakening in Chicago, not even of a salvaging type, but it will provide some momentary solace.

Kansas City Chiefs 21 at Cincinnati Bengals 36

Line: Okay, now I’m convinced — Andy Dalton has turned the corner.

What it means: Bengals quarterback, Andy Dalton, has been known for playing well in the regular season and then terribly in the playoffs. That dichotomy is the primary factor in his being dismissed from any conversation about the best quarterbacks, or even the very, very good quarterbacks in the league. He won’t truly get a chance to change his reputation until he wins in the playoffs but his superb play in the first four games of this season, leading his team to an undefeated record, should make some impact.

Houston Texans 21 at Atlanta Falcons 48

Line: This never would have happened if J.J. Watt was alive.

What it means: J.J. Watt, the phenomenal Texans defensive lineman is, of course, alive. But it’s hard to believe that his team allowed 48 points, even to a high-powered offensive team like the Falcons. This game wasn’t even as close as the score suggests. The Texans scored all 21 of their points in the fourth quarter, when the game was already basically over.

Jacksonville Jaguars 13 at Indianapolis Colts 16

Line: 40 year-old Matt Hasselbeck lead the Colts to an overtime victory. There’s hope for us yet!

What it means: Colts fans could have been forgiven for feeling frightened by the prospect of playing a game without their star quarterback Andrew Luck. They shouldn’t have worried. 40 year-old backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who most people probably thought had been out of the league for a handful of years already, started the game and played well enough for the team to win in overtime.

Philadelphia Eagles 20 at Washington Redskins 23

Line: The whole NFC East is a mess. What a disaster.

What it means: The NFC East with these two teams, the New York Giants, and Dallas Cowboys, is the most famous and infamous division in football. With all four teams in major cities (and television markets) they draw the biggest audiences and attract the most attention. That’s why it’s a little funny and maybe a little schadenfreude-esque when the division is bad. This year, all four teams seem bad.

Cleveland Browns 27 at San Diego Chargers 30

Line: God hates Cleveland.

What it means: The Browns are the hard-luck story of the NFL. No matter what they do right, they seem to do something bigger and more important wrong. Today, it was an offside penalty in the last second that gave the Chargers a second chance to kick a game winning field goal after their first attempt missed. That’s real Cleveland Browns football!

Minnesota Vikings 20 at Denver Broncos 23

Line:  These might be the two best defenses in the league.

What it means: Let everyone else talk about offensive stars like Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning and Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. You can show yourself to be a true football fan by pointing out that the Vikings defense intercepted Peyton Manning twice and the Broncos defense sacked Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater seven (that’s an absurdly high number of sacks) times!

Green Bay Packers 17 at San Francisco 49ers 3

Line: The Packers didn’t do much, but they didn’t need to do very much. The 49ers [your choice of derogatory but not vulgar or bigoted term]!

What it means: The Packers are a truly excellent team. The 49ers are not. There wasn’t much more too this game.

St. Louis Rams 24 at Arizona Cardinals 22

Line: If the Rams could play half as well against everyone else as they do within their division, they’d be a playoff team.

What it means: The Rams have a funny habit of playing much better against the other three teams in their division – the Cardinals, Seattle Seahawks, and San Francisco 49ers – than anyone else. So far this year, they’re 2-0 against the Seahawks and Cardinals – both of which are more well-regarded than the Rams – and 0-2 against everyone else. It’s a small sample size, but it continues a pattern from previous seasons.

Dallas Cowboys 20 at New Orleans Saints 26

Line: Brandon Weeden looked like Tony Romo but Drew Brees looked like Drew Brees. Advantage, Saints.

What it means: The Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback, Tony Romo, is out for the next month with a broken collarbone. Backup quarterback Brandon Weeden played so well at times in this game that you’d be forgiven for thinking he actually was Tony Romo. Alas for Cowboys fans, Saints quarterback Drew Brees, whose play this year had so far been below his own standards and who was suffering from a bruised rotator cuff, looked like his old self. This was an exciting game and it went into overtime where a long pass from Brees to running back C.J. Spiller, ended it decisively in favor of the Saints.

How to plan for the week of Oct 5 – 11, 2015

If you are a sports fan or if you live with a sports fan then your weekly schedule becomes inextricably linked with what sporting events are on at what times during each week. The conflict between missing a sporting event for a poorly committed to social event and missing an appealing social event to watch a game is an important balancing act in any kind of romantic, familial, or business relationship between a sports fan and a non-sports fan. To help facilitate this complicated advanced mathematics, Dear Sports Fan has put together a table showing the most important sporting events of the upcoming week. Print it out, put it on your fridge, and go through it with your scheduling partner.

This does not include MLB baseball games. There are so many of those every day that another approach is needed. That approach is our special Daily MLB Forecast. Same deal, for the most part, with NFL football games. For those, see our NFL Forecast.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: We’ll all be able to take a breath during the day and recover from this past weekend’s sports excesses. In the evening, the NFL returns with a compelling game between the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks. Both teams seem to be tumbling backwards this year and it’s always interesting to see who can stop their fall and start climbing again and how they do it.

Tuesday: Major League Baseball’s playoffs get started today with a one-game wildcard game in the American League. A lot of people are opposed to the existence of these games. It seems cruel to end a team’s playoff run, after a 162 game regular season, with a single defeat. It sure pumps up the drama though, there’s no denying that. At the same time, the WNBA finals get serious with game two between the Minnesota Lynx and Indiana Fever.

Wednesday: It’s hockey season again! Let me repeat: it’s hockey season again! I love hockey. If you want to know why, and why many people love hockey, read my post on the topic. The first nationally televised game of the season is the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks playing against the New York Rangers, who lost in the semifinals last year. It should be a good game but more importantly, it signals the return of hockey! All that said, I can’t really recommend watching it over the MLB’s National League wildcard game which starts at the same time.

Thursday: The European Championships are considered by some people to be an equal or even a superior tournament to the World Cup. How could it be better? Because of the geographic distribution of teams in the World Cup, some feel that the European only field is actually deeper with more skilled teams than the World Cup whose Asian, African, and North American representatives rarely make it past the first knockout round. The next European Championships will be in the summer of 2016 but its qualifying tournament has already begun. Watch Ireland try to upset Germany today. Later on, switch over to the first games of baseball’s divisional series. Or, if you prefer America’s new past-time to its old or future ones, watch a divisional NFL game between the Colts and Texans.

Friday: Date night!

Saturday: Of all the college football on this Saturday, my favorite game to watch will be Navy vs Notre Dame. Navy is such a joy to watch. They play football using a mostly antiquated but still surprisingly effective offensive system called the triple option. This involves running the ball on nearly every play. To make up for the loss of surprise over whether they’ll run or pass, they set up two or three different players who look like they’re going to carry the ball. If the defense guesses wrong, they’ll pay for it. At night, there’s one of the biggest non-World Cup men’s international soccer games in memory. The United States and Mexico play in a one-game playoff to decide who qualifies for the next Confederations Cup. This international tournament is important because its held in the spot of the next World Cup (Russia) the year before the World Cup. It provides an opportunity for something close to a dress rehearsal and is perceived as providing a big advantage for the teams that qualify. This only adds fuel to the always simmering fire of the U.S. vs. Mexico men’s soccer rivalry.

Sunday: The NFL eclipses everything else on most Sundays during the fall. That’s true this Sunday but there are a few other events to keep your eye on. If you’re a golf fan at all, you should check in on the final round of the Presidents Cup. The baseball playoffs, with one game on in the evening, offer a reasonable alternative to football. European championships qualifying soccer and Game Three of the WNBA finals are also strong contenders.

Caveat — This forecast is optimized for the general sports fan, not a particular sports fan. As such, your mileage may vary. For instance, you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of a particular team, then a regular season MLB baseball game or MLS soccer game may be more important on a particular day than anything on the forecast above. Use the calendar as a way to facilitate conversation about scheduling, not as the last word on when there are sports to watch.

Pitch that game: NFL Week 4, 2015

Hello everyone and welcome to America’s favorite game show that… has never actually happened before and no one has heard of it… it’s Pitch That Game!

Here’s how it works. As your host, I have one minute to pitch a sporting event to someone who is not a sports fan. If, after my pitch, they’re interested in watching, I get a point! That’s it! Why would we play such a game? Well, it’s a good way to quickly learn about a set of games to see if you’re interested in following any of them. It’s also a great way for me to learn from you about what may or may not make a sport interesting to a layperson.

In this episode, I pitch you, the listener, all 14 of the NFL games this weekend, on Sunday October 4 and Monday October 5. If you want to know which games will be available on your TV this weekend, check out 506 Sports NFL. If you need help figuring out how to make sense out of what you see there, use my explanation of how to use 506 Sports NFL here.

Enjoy the show!

Sunday, October 4, 2015 9:30 a.m. ET

New York Jets at Miami Dolphins

This game is novel just for its location and time. It’s in London and because of that, it starts at 9:30 a.m. ET. This makes a very civilized way to start the day if you’re on the East Coast. Sit down with your breakfast and morning paper or head out for bottomless Bloody Marys and brunch! Either way, it’s kind of fun to watch football in the morning. Of course, if you’re on the West Coast, this game becomes something else entirely. If you wake up at 6 a.m. to watch the Jets play the Dolphins, you’ve got a serious problem. As for the game itself, no team has been more disappointing this year than the Dolphins. The word trickling through cyberspace is that the players don’t like their coach, Joe Philbin. If the team loses today, he could get fired on Monday.

Sunday, October 4, 2015 1 p.m. ET

New York Giants at Buffalo Bills

Bills fans and even just generally pro-Bills observers are waiting to exhale once they get a sign that these promising Bills are different from other years. The Bills often get off to fast starts only to wilt. This year seems different. This team beat the Colts and Dolphins, two teams we thought were good but that have not played well yet this season. The Bills only loss was to the Patriots, who seem like they might not lose a game this year. If this version of the Bills is really good, they’ll beat the Giants and you’ll hear a lot of exhalations of relief around the country.

Carolina Panthers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston is probably hoping his career will turn into the kind of redemption story that Cam Newton’s has. Both were maligned for “character flaws” coming into the league. The difference is — Cam Newton’s character flaws were over whether he and his family had been paid for his college football career. Winston’s? Winston’s are over the likely sexual assault in his past. Different stories with, I hope, different endings. It may not make you want to watch the game, but I’m going to keep bringing it up and rooting for the Buccaneers to lose until Winston is out of the league.

Oakland Raiders at Chicago Bears

Similar to the Giants vs. Bills game, this game should provide final confirmation of an up-and-coming team’s legitimacy. The problem with the Raiders seeking legitimacy from beating the Bears is that the Bears may actually be too bad to provide any feedback at all. The Chicago Bears are such a mess this year that their general manager started trading players to other teams for future draft picks. That kind of thing happens frequently in other sports but almost never in the NFL, especially not after three weeks. This puts the Raiders in an awkward position. No one will pat them on the back if they beat Chicago but people will certainly make fun of them if they don’t.

Kansas City Chiefs at Cincinnati Bengals

Kansas City has been enjoying a minor sports renaissance over the past few years. For the Chiefs, it started with the arrival of coach Andy Reid from Philadelphia and quarterback Alex Smith from San Francisco. It may be over. Last week’s loss to the Green Bay Packers had all the signs of a team that’s about to cycle through a vicious cycle of blame. The way that works in football is that the quarterback gets blamed first and then the coach and then the general manager. Quarterback Alex Smith will be the first to go and perhaps he should be. His play last week had people scrambling to their computers to see who the team’s backup quarterback was. Another clunker this week and we might all get to know Chase Daniel, college star at Missouri and long-time New Orleans Saints backup, very very well.

Houston Texans at Atlanta Falcons

The plot of this game should be all about the matchup between the incredible Falcons offense and the impenetrable Texans defense. Those units are certainly where the star power on both sides is. Alas, the Texans defense haven’t really shown much impenetrability this year as the team’s 1-2 record reflects. It’s probably safe to assume the Falcons, who have been great on offense, will score some points on the Texans. That pushes the pivotal element of the story over to the other side of the ball where a struggling Houston offense that may improve with the return of their leading rusher, Arian Foster, faces a young Falcons defense that is likely to improve as the season goes on.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Indianapolis Colts

This game could be the most meaningful game of the weekend. The Jaguars are a relatively new franchise, only about 20 years old, and for almost all of their existence they’ve been tortured by the Indianapolis Colts. First the Colts had Peyton Manning, a near unbeatable quarterback, and then, as soon as he left, they got Andrew Luck, another near unbeatable quarterback. In that time, the Jaguars have cycled through many, many quarterbacks, most of whom turned out to be… uh… eminently beatable. The Jaguars franchise, except for a brief blip in the late 1990s, have been a laughingstock — an example of futility. Well, this year, they have been showing signs of earning respectability at least. If the Jaguars could beat the Colts, which seems unlikely but possible to me, it would be a potentially franchise changing win, at least in how people view the Jaguars.

Philadelphia Eagles at Washington Redskins

This game has a variety of interesting sub-plots. First – Philadelphia’s coach, Chip Kelly, and their press department, seem to have decided this week not to refer to the Washington Redskins by their name. This is a hot-button issue because many people, including a majority of Redskins fans, I believe, think the name is racist and should be changed. Washington’s team owner disagrees and so far has refused to consider it. Second – there may be a hurricane hitting the East Coast just as this game begins. Football prognosticators often warn that bad weather doesn’t change a game as much as one would think but I don’t think a hurricane fits into that description. From my perspective, there’s nothing better than watching football in bad weather… from my couch. As for the stakes of the game, they’re pretty big. With the other two teams in the Eagles and Redskins’ division struggling, it seems like an 8-8 record might get a team into the playoff. When you’re expecting so few wins in a division, it magnifies every victory, especially one like this where a victory for you means a defeat for another team in the division.

Sunday, October 4, 2015 4:05 or 4:25 p.m. ET

Cleveland Browns at San Diego Chargers

One of the greatest fallacies in sports is that the better the teams involved, the better the game will be. It’s simply not true. Sometimes you have two great teams that play each other and it’s completely boring. That won’t be a problem in this game. These two teams are bad. But they’re interestingly bad. The Chargers have a very good quarterback in Phillip Rivers but literally four of their starting five offensive linemen didn’t practice on Friday because they’re all injured. A great quarterback can be made to look pedestrian if he plays behind a bad offensive line. Rivers might just look like he’s scrambling for his life. The Browns on the other hand… well, basically their entire team reportedly isn’t happy with their coaches decision to go with the, perhaps more competent, but certainly less exciting quarterback on their roster, Josh McCown instead of Johhny Manziel. As long as McCown is in the game, the Browns are aiming for a solid B-. With Manziel, they’ll either get an A or an F with no in between. Who knows, perhaps Manziel will get a shot in this game — it will certainly be interesting to watch if he does.

Minnesota Vikings at Denver Broncos

The Broncos defense, one of the best, if not the best in the league, will present Vikings sophomore quarterback Teddy Bridgewater with his biggest test yet. I enjoyed watching Bridgewater in college — he has a calm, in control way about him that’s easy to root for, so I hope he passes the test with flying colors. As for the Broncos side of the ball, this is the fourth time we get to see quarterback Peyton Manning play for coach Gary Kubiak. Manning has spent most of his career in charge of every element of what his offense is doing. That’s unique in today’s NFL. This season, he’s had to adjust to a coach who wants to do their own thing on offense and has the support of management to make it happen. It’s been totally fascinating to watch the offense evolve each week as the theoretically collaborative power struggle between coach and quarterback continues. My guess is that they’ll find a happy and winning middle ground.

Green Bay Packers at San Francisco 49ers

If you want to see evidence of the great influence a coach has in the NFL, look no farther than the dramatic change in the plot of a matchup between these two teams. Just a few years ago, the 49ers were the team that frustrated the Packers like no other. The 49ers traveled to Lambeau Field in Green Bay and knocked the Packers out of the playoffs. 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was the next big thing – a player with limitless potential. Now the 49ers are 1-2 and people are openly wondering whether the team will bother to pick up Kaepernick’s option for next season. Meanwhile, the Packers remain one of the most stable and successful teams in the league. There’s very little doubt about the outcome of this game but very little doesn’t mean none. It’ll be worth watching, even just for the visual spectacle of seeing the 49ers traditional red and gold opposite the Packers even more traditional green and yellow.

St. Louis Rams at Arizona Cardinals

Virtually no one thinks the Rams have much of a shot in this game. The Cardinals have burst out of the gate this season and look like one of the best three teams in the league. They’re undefeated and tough to play at home in Arizona. The Rams, on the other hand, are 1-2 and looking classically shabby, like the Rams often do. I won’t deny any of that… but I just have a feeling that we could be missing the boat on this one. The Rams often play well in divisional games, which this one is, no matter how bad they are and how good their divisional opponent is. For evidence, we need look no farther than their Week One victory over the Seattle Seahawks. The Rams are also best at exploiting what the Cardinals are worst at. The Rams have a scarily good defensive line and the Cardinals are ever so slightly questionable on offensive line. The Cardinals would never do this, but if I were them, I’d be tempted to pull injury plagued and essential quarterback Carson Palmer out of the game at the least provocation.

Sunday, October 4, 2015 8:30 p.m. ET

Dallas Cowboys at New Orleans Saints

This is not what the NFL schedulers had in mind when they put this game on national television. They couldn’t imagine that the Cowboys would be without their best two players on offense or that the Saints would be winless on the year. On the other hand those losses amplify the importance of this game. It’s virtually a playoff game for the Saints and in Week Four, that is actually about as compelling as a scheduler could imagine. Talk about tripping into success. Nice job NFL schedulers!

Monday, October 5, 2015 8:30 p.m. ET

Detroit Lions at Seattle Seahawks

This game seems like a tough sell. An 0-3 team playing a 1-2 team? Ugh. Forget about the records though and it has all the component needed for an exciting game. The Detroit Lions have one of the most fantastic offensive players in NFL history in wide receiver Calvin Johnson. 6’5″ tall and as fast as a gazelle, he’s a potent weapon. Standing across from him on virtually every play will be Richard Sherman, the leader of a daunting Seattle Seahawks defense, and himself one of the most smotheringly frustrating-to-play against defensive players in the league. That one on one matchup, best against best, will be worth the price of admission. Okay, just looked at StubHub and the cheapest seats available are around $160. So, maybe not worth that, but worth turning your TV on and watching, for sure.