Why don't Giants fans like the Cowboys?

Dear Sports Fan,

I am still learning about American football. There are too many rules. 🙂 Anyway, last night watching the game of Cowboy and Lions with friends in NYC, I realized Giants fans don’t like the Cowboys. Why is that?

Happy New Year,
Eunee

Dear Eunee,

No fan of an National Football League (NFL) team particularly likes any of the other 31 teams in the league but you’re right that fans of the New York Giants like the Dallas Cowboys less than most. I know there’s a little bit of ambiguity in that statement. Let me clarify. Fans of the New York Giants like the Cowboys less than they like most other teams AND fans of the New York Giants like the Cowboys less than fans of other teams like the Cowboys. I meant both meanings because they are both true! There are a few reasons for this, one obvious to football fans but which requires some explanation to everyone else and a couple more subtle ones. The football reason which needs to be explained to be understood is that the Cowboys and Giants play in the same division.

The NFL is made up of 32 teams. These teams are split into two 16 team conferences. The conferences are based on history, not geography. The National Football Conference (NFC) is made up mostly of original NFL teams while the American Football Conference (AFC) is made up of mostly teams that were originally part of the American Football League (AFL), a professional league that competed with the NFL before the two leagues merged between 1966 and 1970. Within each conference, the teams are divided into four groups of four teams each called divisions. Conferences and divisions are importantly largely because they help define a team’s opponents each season and affect a team’s playoff chances. As we discussed at length a couple of weeks ago, playoff spots are reserved for the best team in each of the four divisions, regardless of how that team compares to other teams in the conference or league. Each year team’s play every other team in their division twice, six games against other teams in their conference, and only four against teams from the other conference. Not only do games against the other teams in their division mean more for determining whether a team makes the playoffs but because the teams play against each other twice a year, every year (that’s somewhere around five times more frequently than teams in the same conference but not the same division and eight times more frequently than teams in the other conference) divisional opponents tend to develop fierce rivalries. Fans pick up these rivalries and often carry them even more ferociously than the players or coaches involved.

The New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys are in the NFC East division along with the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins. Giants fans, of course, (sports) hate the Eagles and Redskins as well as the Cowboys (and if either of those teams had been in the playoffs, you would have heard complaints about them too), but maybe, Giants fans hate those teams just a smidge less. There are two reasons for this: the first is simply a question of geography. Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are at least mid-Atlantic cities. They’re not the same as New York, and from my understanding of New Yorkers, they don’t pose a threat to New York from a city-comparison perspective, but they are at least understandable. The Cowboys, on the other hand, are from way out in Texas somewhere and the identity of their team and fans, while not as outwardly offensive as the Washington Redskins, is totally foreign to New Yorkers. Dallas epitomizes everything that’s foreign and slightly embarrassing for football fans who grew up in New York. This is particularly true because somewhere in the 1970s, the Cowboys became one of the most overall popular teams in the NFL. This led to their being nicknamed “America’s Team” in 1978 by NFL films itself. This legacy has lived on and, despite only having won a single playoff game before this past weekend since 1996, the Cowboys have remained central to the NFL. They are the premiere team, the most talked about team, the most widely loved team, even when someone else wins the Super Bowl. That plays into them engendering more hatred than any other team as well.

Whether you decide to be a Cowboys fan or hater, I hope you enjoy the playoffs,
Ezra Fischer

How do substitutions work in soccer?

Dear Sports Fan,

How do substitutions work in soccer? I have been watching a bunch of English Premier League soccer on TV and it seems like teams often make a bunch of substitutions right at the end of the game. I don’t know why they would do that — the game is basically over.

Thanks,
Della

 

Dear Della,

Great question! A substitution is when a player on the field is replaced by a player who has been sitting on the bench. Substitutions are a big part of the tactics of most of the sports we’re used to watching on TV. Football teams substitute players on almost every play. In basketball, there’s an official award given each year to the best substitute called the Sixth Man of the Year Award. Baseball substitutions are notoriously tactic-y, especially in the National League where teams substitute hitters in order to avoid having their pitcher at bat. Substitutions in soccer are less obvious tactically because of soccer’s fluidity of play and the restrictive nature of the rules that pertain to substitutions but they are important nonetheless. We’ll take a quick run through how substitutions work, why and how teams use them, as well as looking backwards and forwards through time to the history and potential future of substitutions in soccer.

How do Substitutions Work in Soccer?

A soccer team can choose to substitute a new player for one who has been playing at any point during a game. When the coach decides to make a substitution, he or she tells an official who hangs out near the team benches, and that official signals the referee. At the next dead ball (a stop in play that occurs when the ball goes out-of-bounds for a throw-in or goal-kick but not for a corner kick or a foul) the ref stops the game and allows the substitution to be made. There are two somewhat picky rules about this process. The substitute is supposed to wait at the side of the field at exactly the half-way line until the player who is being substituted for leaves the field completely. Refs are allowed to discipline (by giving yellow or red cards) players who violate these rules…

[begin detour] I never understood these rules when I played soccer — I thought they were an arbitrary way for the referee to establish superiority over the players. In researching this post though, I came across a funny thing in the Wikipedia article on substitutions in soccer:

The referee has no specific power to force a player to be substituted, even if the team manager or captain has ordered their player to be substituted. If a player refuses to be substituted play may simply resume with that player on the field.

So, that’s curious — if the ref can’t force a player to be substituted, then it makes sense to make the steps of substitution so formal and obvious. That way the ref can at least quickly identify when a player refuses to be substituted. In any event, this basically never happens, I just thought it was interesting. [end detour]

Two more rules make substitutions more interesting in soccer. First, a player who has been substituted cannot, once she or he has left the field, return to play. Not in the next half, not in overtime, not for a shootout. This is different from football and basketball but the same as baseball. Second, substitutions are very limited in number. At top competitive levels like the World Cup, British Premier League, Bundisliga, La Liga, even MLS, teams are only allowed three substitutions per game. There are no exceptions to this rule. If a team has used all three of their subs and a player on their team gets injured badly enough to have to leave the game, too bad, the team plays down one player. If a team has used all their subs and their goalie gets kicked out of the game, too bad, they cannot put a new goalie in although they can designate one of the regular players as a goalie and give her gloves and a different colored shirt.

Why and how do soccer teams use substitutions?

There are three main tactical reasons for a soccer team to make a substitution: removing an under-performing or injured player, shifting the team to be more offensive or defensive, or wasting time. Let’s start with the third, since that was the tactic you identified in your question. Substitutions take time to perform. The player being substituted for has to run (or walk, or saunter, or limp,) from wherever they are on the field to where the substitute is waiting to come on. A team that is winning that has substitutes left to use near the end of the game may choose to substitute mostly just to waste the time it takes to execute the substitution. When this is the intent of the substitution, you’ll see the player coming off the field move as slowly as he or she can without attracting the ire of the ref. He may wave at the crowd or clap in appreciation. She might slow down to hug a teammate or give some likely unnecessary instructions. This is a little cynical and it shouldn’t actually work since the ref keeps the official time and can simply pause his or her watch to counter-act the hijinks, but it’s still commonly attempted. The second tactic is making a substitution to shift the stance of the team to be more aggressive or more defensive. Based on the situation, a team might choose to play it safe by replacing an attacking player with a defensive one or gamble by taking a defender off the field and putting on an attacking striker. Other substitutions are made to replace a player who isn’t playing up to snuff based on an injury or just general malaise. Because substitutions are so limited, being forced to make one for injury or bad play is perceived as a bad thing for that team.

What is the history and future of substitutions?

Another thing I was surprised to learn from the Wikipedia article about substitutions is how recent of an innovation it is in soccer. Soccer has been around in one form or another for hundreds of years in Europe and possibly elsewhere before it was formalized in the mid 1800s in England. For close to a hundred years after the soccer rules were written up in 1863, substitutes were simply people who played in a game when some players on a team didn’t show up — you know, like they got stuck in a bad carriage-jam on the interstate. It wasn’t until the 1950s that substitutes were allowed during a game. Before then, an injured player was expected to either play on or put their team at a numerical disadvantage. The number of subs slowly increased until in 1995 when the rules were changed to allow for the current three.

We’re likely to see another change coming soon to modify the game to handle head-injuries better. One problem with limited the number of substitutes is that it gives an even greater incentive to players and teams to play through injuries, even potentially dangerous ones. As we learn more about concussions, we know that they are important to test for as soon as possible and that a player who suffers a second blow to the head after a concussion is in much greater danger than she was after the first injury. The problem with the current rules is that players don’t want to leave the field to be tested, much less to be substituted. We saw this a few times during the last World Cup when there were a couple of high-profile incidents with clearly dazed players playing for some time before eventually being removed. No one knows exactly how soccer will evolve, but something has to be done, and it will probably modify the way substitutions work.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

What happened on Monday, January 5, 2015?

  1. Canada Juniors win gold: The Canadian Juniors National team captured the gold medal (did they lay a trap?) on home ice last night with a 5-4 victory over Russia. It was the first time since 2009 that Canada had won this competition, which is a long drought in a country that takes it so seriously. Apparently the World Junior Championships is treated as seriously in Canada as the College Football National Championships or March Madness is treated in the United States.
    Line: Sometimes it’s more exciting to watch slightly unpolished young players than it is to watch the very best.
  2. An unstable night for the Thunder: The Oklahoma City Thunder lost 91-117 to the Golden State Warriors just hours after rumors of a trade involving them spread throughout the Twitterverse. There are more people and draft picks involved, but basically the Thunder get former Cavalier Dion Waiters, the Cavaliers get former Knicks J. R. Smith and Iman Shumpert, and the Knicks… well, the Knicks are expected to waive all the players they picked up in the trade, so the only thing you can say is that the Knicks get to save a bunch of money.
    Line: Did you know that all three teams involved in the trade lost last night? It’s hard to concentrate when there’s so many rumors buzzing around.
  3. Close game and more ahead: Neither side of the Notre Dame vs. North Carolina game get to relax after the 71-70 Notre Dame victory. Notre Dame’s next game is against number three ranked Virginia and North Carolina’s next game is against number five ranked Louisville. Expect more of the same high quality, nerve-wracking play in those games.
    Line: No rest for the very good at basketball!

Sports Forecast for Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

In today’s segment, I covered:

  • English FA Cup – West Ham at Everton, 2:45 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
  • NBA Basketball – Phoenix Suns at Milwaukee Bucks, 8 p.m. ET on NBA TV.
  • NHL Hockey – San Jose Sharks at Minnesota Wild, 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NCAA Basketball – Villanova at Saint John’s, 9 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.

How does kneeling work in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does kneeling work in football? This is one part of the game that I just don’t understand. Even in a close game, it seems like both teams decide that the game is over while there is still time on the clock. Why is that? And when does it happen?

Thanks,
Jack

Dear Jack,

Football is the ultimate effort sport. It’s a cliche that football players and coaches talk about “going 110%” and “leaving it all out on the field.” To which most people reply, “you can’t go harder than 100%, that’s nonsensical” and as for “leaving it all out on the field, we hope that doesn’t include your pants, underwear, or long-term health.” Nonetheless, it does seem like football players and coaches constantly give their full effort to winning the game. That makes it all the more disconcerting for viewers when the game ends with one or a series of plays where neither team seems to be trying at all. These plays are called kneel downs or quarterback kneels. The quarterback kneel is sort of like what happens in a chess game when one player sees that their opponent will be able to checkmate them in a few moves, no matter what they do. It’s a concession, but in this case the initiative is taken by the winning side instead of the losing side. When a team kneels, they’re saying that they are willing to sacrifice their attempt to advance the ball in order to safely run time off the clock. Here’s how it works.

Football is a game with a clock. In each quarter of the game, the clock starts at fifteen minutes (for this post, we’re assuming that you’re watching the NFL, but things are almost the same in college football) in each quarter and counts down to zero. When the clock hits zero in the fourth quarter, the game is over and whichever team has more points, wins. It’s also a game of alternating possessions. One team has the ball and keeps it as long as they can move the ball ten yards in four plays (if this concept is still blurry for you, read our post on down and distance). Although most plays last for only a few seconds to a dozen, the clock may count down between plays. Whether or not the clock runs is based on the outcome of the previous play. The rules that dictate this are somewhat Byzantine but to understand the kneel down, you only need to know that if a player who has the ball is tackled within the field, the clock runs between plays. When a player (usually the quarterback) kneels with the ball, they are performing a ritual equivalent of being tackled with the ball — instead of actually being tackled, according to NFL rules, they are allowed to simulate being tackled by voluntarily kneeling. When a quarterback kneels with the ball, that play is over and the ball is set up for the next play. Teams are allowed up to forty seconds between plays. So, a team that kneels the ball can expect that action to allow around 42 seconds to run off the clock. The reason why it’s 42 and not 40 is that the play itself might take around three seconds and a team will snap the ball with about one second left on the forty-second play clock.

Like so much of football, the simple concept of kneeling is complicated by a few technicalities. If you enjoy technicalities, you’ll love football! There’s a reason why so many NFL referees are lawyers! The first technicality is that the clock always stops on a change of possession. A change of possession, when the team that starts with the ball on one play does not start with the ball on the next is normally the result of an interception, a fumble, or a punt but it can also be the result of a fourth down play that isn’t a punt but doesn’t result in a first down. In other words, if a team kneels on fourth down, the game clock will immediately stop at the end of the play; it will not run once the play is done. That effectively limits kneeling to be a first, second, or third down tactic. The other technicality is that each team gets three timeouts per half. These timeouts can be used between any two plays and they result, not only in a commercial break, but also in the game clock stopping between plays. A time out can counteract the effect of kneeling. The last technicality is the two-minute warning. This is an arbitrary timeout that’s called (but not charged to either team) after the last play that starts before the game clock has hit 2:00 remaining in the second and fourth quarters. The two-minute warning would also stop the clock between plays, so kneeling before it is rare.

So, how do you know when a team is going to use the kneeling strategy? Usually, a team will only kneel if, by kneeling on successive plays, they can run the clock all the way to zero and therefore conclusively win the game. The exact time in a game when they can do this is modified by the number of timeouts the team without the ball has and the down for the team that has the ball and is leading the game. It’s a sliding scale best expressed as a table:

 

Kneel Chart NFL 2

Remember, a team can waste 42 seconds per kneel down but that is made up of three seconds to execute the kneel and another 39 that runs off between plays if the clock does not stop. Here’s a few examples of how I got to the numbers in the cells:

  • 1st down, one timeout remaining: 1st down — kneel for three seconds, defense takes a timeout; 2nd down — kneel for three seconds (6 total), defense has no timeouts remaining, so the clock runs an additional 39 seconds (45 total); 3rd down — kneel for three seconds (48 total), defense has no time remaining, so the clock runs an additional 39 seconds (87 or 1:27 total).
  • 2nd down, no timeouts remaining: 2nd down, kneel for three seconds, clock runs an additional 39 (42 total); third down — kneel for three seconds, clock runs an additional 39 (84 or 1:24 total).

You can see from this chart how the two-minute warning affects this strategy by effectively giving the trailing team another timeout. If it weren’t for that official timeout at 2:00, the top left cell would read 2:06 and teams would be able to safely start kneeling six seconds earlier than they do now.

The tactic of kneeling in football is a bit of a strange cultural fit. It’s odd to see teams that have tried so hard and so violently to beat each other, go through the motions of the final plays in the game. Allowing the offense to mimic being tackled in order to run the clock down isn’t a fair representation of a normal football play because it takes away the ability of the defense to create a fumble or interception and get the ball back immediately for their team. Nonetheless, it’s the way things are done today by rule and by custom. At least now I hope you understand what it is and how it works.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

2015 NFL Wildcard One Liners

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by Google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

Wildcard Weekend

Saturday, January 3, at 4:35 p.m. ET, on ESPN

Arizona Cardinals 16, at Carolina Panthers 27

The Cardinals could not overcome the loss of their best two quarterbacks during the season. The Panthers took advantage of Cardinals third string quarterback, Ryan Lindley, by interception two of his passes on their way to setting an NFL record for fewest yards allowed in a playoff game. It often seems like records like that are arbitrary but in this case, that’s basically all you need to know about the game: the Cardinals offense was completely impotent and no matter how valiantly they tried on defense, they could not overcome it.
Line: Hard to win when you can’t play offense.

Saturday, January 3, at 8:15 p.m. ET on NBC

Baltimore Ravens 30, at Pittsburgh Steelers 17

The story of the game according to most writers and commentators was how badly the Steelers missed their running back, Le’Veon Bell who missed the game with a knee injury. In my mind though, the most interesting part of the game was Pittsburgh’s last drive of the game. Down by two scores, the Steelers were desperately trying to score when quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and then a play or two later, Tight End Heath Miller were forced to leave the game with apparent head injuries. This seemed like the ultimate triumph of concussion awareness — to pull star players off the field in a pivotal drive of a playoff game would have been unthinkable in past years. But then, but then, after backup quarterback Bruce Gradkowski drove them down the field, Roethlisberger came back out and immediately threw an interception to lose the game. From what I know, you can’t actually test for a concussion in the amount of time he missed. So, how did he get back on the field? Did his team not take the concussion test seriously? If not, then why was he even missing for as long as he was? Also, when will teams learn that a healthy backup is better than a woozy, brain injured starter?
Line: The Steelers missed Bell all game but they might have had a chance at the end if they hadn’t stuck a potentially concussed quarterback back on the field.

Sunday, January 4, at 1:05 p.m. ET on CBS

Cincinnati Bengals 10, at Indianapolis Colts 26

Coming into this game, the narrative was all about a quarterback who can’t win big games (Andy Dalton of the Bengals) vs. a quarterback who loves playing in big games (Andrew Luck of the Colts.) Looks a lot like that narrative was confirmed by the outcome of this game although, of course, we know that football games are the product of somewhere around thirty people’s performances and not just one. The result was not unexpected but you would think it would force Cincinnati’s executives into making some difficult choices about their two most important employees, the coach and quarterback.
Line: It just seems like Cincinnati cannot win a playoff game. Did you know the last time they won a playoff game was 1990?

Sunday, January 4, at 4:40 p.m. ET on Fox

Detroit Lions 20, at Dallas Cowboys 24

The best game (and if we’re being honest about it, the only really good one) of the weekend was this one between the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys. The Lions jumped out to a lead and spent most of the game playing from ahead. The game was billed as a battle between the Cowboys great offense and the Lions excellent defense, especially between their offensive and defensive lines. For most of the game, the Lions defensive line was winning that battle and frequently putting Cowboy’s quarterback Tony Romo under pressure or on his back. Finally, in the second half, Romo found a way to distribute the ball before being killed and the Cowboys pulled ahead. In the end, it was the Lions offense pushing the ball down the field in a last-ditch attempt against the Dallas defense. They came up short and the Cowboys advanced.
Line: Both teams have a reputation for coming up short in mind-bogglingly frustrating ways. Yesterday it was the Lions’ turn.

Sports Forecast for Monday, January 5, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

In today’s segment, I covered:

  • NBA Basketball – Oklahoma City Thunder at Golden State Warriors, 10:30 p.m. ET on NBA TV.
  • NHL Hockey – San Jose Sharks at Winnipeg Jets, 8 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NCAA Basketball – Notre Dame at North Carolina, 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NCAA Basketball – Oklahoma at Texas, 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Sunday, January 4, 2014?

  1. SO MUCH FOOTBALL: So much that we’ll have a special edition of our NFL One Liners coming out in a little while. Watch this space (as Rachel Maddow says) for those convenient reminders of what to say if someone engages with you in a conversation about football.
  2. Cavaliers struggle without their horse: Sports writer and impresario Bill Simmons has a theory he calls the Ewing Theory that teams often counter-intuitively play better when they are missing their star player. This isn’t proving true for the Cleveland Cavaliers. After losing to the Dallas Mavericks 109-90 yesterday, the Cavaliers have lost three of four games while their star Lebron James is out with a knee injury.
    Line: Not that it disproves the Ewing Theory, but the Cavs stink without LeBron.
  3. So long, Stuart Scott: A popular and groundbreaking ESPN personality, Stuart Scott, died yesterday. Scott started at ESPN 22 years ago and is remembered most fondly for his time as an anchor on the sports highlight show, Sports Center. In the 1990s, when that show was the biggest thing in sports, Scott was one of the most charismatic anchors. People throughout the sports world (including President Obama, who said of his fellow Chicagoan: “I will miss Stuart Scott. Twenty years ago, Stu helped usher in a new way to talk about our favorite teams and the day’s best plays.”) are paying tribute to Scott. For more, read the ESPN obituary here.
    Line: [Whatever you say about someone who has died at 49. If you knew his work, I wouldn’t try to feed you a line. If you didn’t, just ask people who are sports fans what they remember about Scott.]

2015 NFL Wildcard Weekend Good Gop, Bad Cop Precaps

It’s the NFL Wildcard weekend. The first of two weekends with four NFL playoff games spread across Saturday and Sunday like an octopus with each limb representing a team still alive to make the Super Bowl. Wildcard weekend is, in my mind, the second best weekend of the NFL season. This year, my friend Brendan and I recorded 10-15 minute preview podcasts of each of the games. I’ve linked to those in the game titles below. But, lucky for you, it’s not just Brendan and me blathering on about the NFL. Fresh of a season of previewing all the NFL games, our favorite police duo bring their good cop, bad cop act into the playoffs and preview all the matchups in the National Football League this weekend.

Wildcard Weekend

Saturday, January 3, at 4:35 p.m. ET, on ESPN

Arizona Cardinals at Carolina Panthers

Good cop: I think this is the most compelling of all this weekend’s playoff games! The Panthers have been much maligned because of making the playoffs with a losing record! But you know what? The NFL isn’t like the NBA where the top seeds almost always win! Anything can happen in the NFL! The Panthers are coming off four wins in a row and I think they’re a dangerous team! Meanwhile, Arizona is a battle-tested team that’s had to rely on each other all year to overcome injuries! Not only have they overcome, but they thrived in the most difficult division in football, the NFC West! Don’t write off the Cardinals!

Bad cop: On any given Sunday, this game would be about the tenth most interesting on the NFL schedule. Just because these two terminally flawed teams made the playoffs and will play each other doesn’t mean the game will be worth watching. If it sounds like a mediocre game and it smells like a mediocre game and it looks like a mediocre game… it probably will be a mediocre game; even in the playoffs.

Saturday, January 3, at 8:15 p.m. ET on NBC

Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers

Good cop: If you don’t like this game, then you don’t like football! This is the perfect blend of old-timey smash mouth football and new-age innovative offensive football! The Steelers and Ravens really, actually, more than what is normal even for football teams, don’t like each other! And they play harder against each other than against any other teams! Add that to the additional playoff intensity and you’re going to get a game that’s blisteringly exciting! I know I’m not alone in being excited for this game! The NFL schedulers always put the most exciting game on Saturday night of these four game playoff weekends!!

Bad cop: Everything you said is true. Also true is the fact that the vast, silent majority of people, even football fans, are cringing now more than ever when they see a player get injured, especially with a brain injury. All that extra intensity? It’s not going to create better performances, it’s going to create more chaos and more injuries. I think I’ll take a pass on this one and abuse my own brain in an acceptable way, like drinking beer and watching the entire last season of Downton Abbey to prep for Sunday’s season premiere.

Sunday, January 4, at 1:05 p.m. ET on CBS

Cincinnati Bengals at Indianapolis Colts

Good cop: I am totally fascinated by this game! It’s the perfect test of the power of sports narrative! Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton is known for collapsing in big games, like playoff games where he’s 0-3 and primetime games where he’s 3-6! At least this game is only in the playoffs and not also in primetime! On the other side of the field, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck is known for coming through in big games! Last year in the playoffs he actually managed to recover his running back’s fumble on the two yard line and run it into the endzone for a touchdown! This game is football and fate intertwined!

Bad cop: You talk about fate? I’m the one who feels like Cassandra all the time here. This game is going to be so bad. It’s the worst of the four. I keep telling everyone this and no one will listen to me. Dalton is bad at football, his best receiver AJ Green is injured in seventeen different ways, and just to top it off, this game is going to be played indoors on carpet. That’s no place to play a playoff game. Pah.

Sunday, January 4, at 4:40 p.m. ET on Fox

Detroit Lions at Dallas Cowboys

Good cop: The weekend ends with the best matchup of the four games! For most of the year, the Cowboys had the best offense in the NFL and Detroit had the best defense! This game matches strength against strength! The Cowboy’s offensive line against Detroit’s defensive line! A gigantic game between the two traditional Thanksgiving day hosts?!! It’s like it’s Thanksgiving all over again! A cornucopia of wonderful football!

Bad cop: Mmm. Just like the Turkey at your Thanksgiving dinner this year, this one is a little overcooked. As good of a matchup as this looked a month ago, now it’s dry and less tasty. Sure, both teams won four of their last five games but look who they played. Dallas beat up on Bears, Eagles, Colts, and Redskins (only one playoff team) while the Lions feasted on the Buccaneers, Vikings, and Bears twice (no playoff teams.) Talk about turkeys. Whoever wins this game will be sure to lose next weekend, so why even bother watching?.?

2015 NFL Wildcard Preview Detroit at Dallas

Hey everyone and Happy New Year!

January isn’t just the best time to break your newly  made resolutions, it’s also a great time for following and watching football. The NFL playoffs begin this weekend and to help prepare for the games, I invited my old friend Brendan Gilfillan to join me in a series of podcasts. We’ll go through each NFL playoff game and talk through the most interesting characters, the basic plot of the game, who we want to win and who we think is going to win, and just for fun, we’ll share our favorite player names from each playoff team. I hope you enjoy it.

The NFL Wildcard Round

NFL Football — Sunday, January 4, 2015 — Detroit Lions at Dallas Cowboys, 4:40 p.m. ET on Fox.

  • Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, wide receiver Calvin Johnson, and defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh
  • Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, running back DeMarco Murray, and wide receiver Dez Bryant
  • A plot synopsis of the game
  • The players on both teams whose names we most envy and enjoy
  • Who we want to win and who we think is going to win
  • And much, much more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

 

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.