If you’re watching the Thursday NFL game between the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins, you might be thinking that the Washington running back, Alfred Morris, seems pretty cool. He is! Here’s an excerpt from a great story you should read about him — Why Redskins Star Alfred Morris’ Dream Is This Humble 1991 Mazda 626 by Patrick George for Jalopnik.
Morris, a Pensacola native, said he bought the 626 from his pastor for $2 back when he was playing for Florida Atlantic University. (The car still has an expired parking sticker from the college on its windshield.)
Morris is a cheerful, affable, down to earth guy. Even though he’s an NFL star with an NFL salary, he said he had more reasons to keep The Bentley than to get rid of it.
“This is my baby, man,” he said. “It’s more than just a car. I didn’t grow up with a lot. This helps me remember where I come from and where I’m going.”
For sports fans, the weekend is a cornucopia of wonderful games to watch. This is particularly true in the fall with its traditional pattern of College Football on Saturday and NFL Football on Sunday and Monday. As the parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend of a sports fan, this can be a challenge. It must be true that some games are more important to watch than others but it’s hard to know which is which. As a sports fan, the power of habit and hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars get in the way of remembering to take a break from sports and do something with your parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend. To aid all of us in this, and just because it’s fun, I’m going to write a weekly post highlighting a single game that is ideal for skipping. Use this to help tell yourself or someone else: “Do not watch this game!”
Sunday, 1:00 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Baltimore Ravens vs. Carolina Panthers. It’s on CBS but do not watch this game!
I’ll start this week by copping to the truth about this game — there is a reason to watch it. There’s a single plot that will be played out on Sunday that’s almost fascinating enough to make the game worth watching. Steve Smith Sr. was a wide receiver on the Panthers team for 13 years. He’s their all time leader in basically every receiving statistic out there. He was also the heart of the team for more than a decade. At 5’9″, he’s a lot smaller than you’d expect for a player of this reputation, but what he lacks in size, he’s made up for in furious intensity. He’s a great player. Over this past summer, the Carolina Panthers let Steve Smith walk. He walked right into the Baltimore Ravens starting lineup and has been one of their best players this year. Now, he gets to play against his old team. This story is the focus of this game — the Charlotte Observer called this “Steve Smith Week.”
You know what? That’s going to make for a really frustrating game to watch. Revenge fantasies very rarely come to fruition in sports, especially not in football where there are so many players on each team and so many factors which go into winning or losing. Smith is likely to have a couple big plays that, if you want to, you could point to as being a big narrative deal. But no one player, not even Steve Smith, can decide the outcome of a game. There are larger issues at hand — can Cam Newton’s offensive line keep him from adding another injury to his bruised ribs and sprained ankle? Who will run the ball for the Panthers since their running back core looks like an ambulance corps? Can the Panthers’ defensive line win over a Baltimore offensive line that hasn’t allowed a sack in two games?
The coverage of this game is going to be so slanted towards the Steve Smith story that it’s going to be frustrating to listen to and a let-down to watch. Do not watch this game!
Of course, if you or the fan in your life is a Baltimore Ravens or Carolina Panthers fan, this isn’t a good game to skip. As an alternate, skip the Sunday early afternoon game between the New Orleans and the Dallas Cowboys. Why? Because the Cowboys have the worst pass defense in the league and the Saints are going to feast on them like they’re étouffée.
I don’t get why some people find punts exciting. Isn’t a punt basically a negative thing? It happens when a team decides they can’t advance the ball anymore and instead of trying, they punt. How are punts in football exciting?
Confused,
Connie
— — —
Dear Connie,
You’re absolutely right that punts only happen when one team decides they cannot advance the ball anymore and instead of risking giving the ball to the other team where it currently is, they choose to trade field position for possession and give the ball up. This doesn’t mean it’s not exciting though. In fact, I think the punt is one of the most exciting plays in football and I’m happy to explain some reasons why. If you missed our post yesterday on how punts work, you might want to brush up on that before you read this one. Don’t forget to come back though!
Why the punt is exciting for the receiving team
The receiving team starts out pretty excited about the punt because it means they’ve succeeded on defense. They prevented the opposing team from scoring or even moving the ball ten yards to get a new first down. It’s also exciting because it means they’re about to get the ball back. The excitement doesn’t stop there though, because if they play the punt return right, they might even score on that play!
Although it may look a little chaotic, every player on the field while their team returns a punt has a very precise mission. First, the receiving team tries to worm through or around the guys protecting the punter to see if they can block the punt before it gets going.
If that doesn’t work, and it normally doesn’t, the players switch over to slowing down the opposing team’s players so that their punt returner has room to catch the ball and doesn’t need to call for a fair catch. Then, once the punt returner has caught the ball, the other players on his team turn into blockers — trying to prevent the kicking team’s players from hitting him and also trying to shove them around to create running lanes for the returner. This sounds like a thankless job, and a lot of times it is, but once in a while, someone blocking for a punt returner will make a block so spectacular that the crowd roars in appreciation. Of all the hits in football, hits while blocking for a returner can be among the most violent because of the speed and the potential to hit someone who is focusing on something else. Here’s an example of a player getting “decleated” on a punt return:
Once a returner catches the ball, he takes off like a wild deer and sprints upfield, dodging and spinning and hurtling until he’s either caught and tackled or scores a touchdown. Punt return touchdowns are among the most exciting in the game. Take a look at this one from the Dallas Cowboys and watch how all the players on their return team block for punt returner Dez Bryant:
Sometimes, even when the blocking fails, a supremely talented and fearless punt returner can create a touchdown on his own. These are the most exciting punt return touchdowns. This one from Dante Hall in 2003 has stuck in my memory as being one of the best I’ve ever seen:
That type of return is few and far between, but the potential is there on every punt. That’s what makes the punt so exciting for the return team.
Why the punt is exciting for the kicking team
The punt can be very exciting for the kicking team because they have clear goals that take extreme coordination, precision, and often a little bit of luck. They also have things that they don’t want to have happen. The good outcomes are often incredibly close from the bad outcomes. For instance, the punting team might be aiming to kick the ball out of bounds at the two yard line because then the opposing team has to start from their own two yard line on offense. If the ball flies an extra two yards, and goes out of bounds in the end-zone, it’s a touchback and the receiving team gets the ball on their twenty yard line. The same thing holds with a punt that bounces around within the field of play. If it goes into the end-zone, the receiving team starts on the twenty. If it stops on the one… that’s a nineteen yard advantage for the kicking team. Here, the kicking team can do something to aid their own cause. If they can run down the field in time to do it, they can grab the ball before it rolls into the end-zone or even bounce it back to one of their teammates. This can be an exciting adventure because it involves players trying to control a frustratingly oblong bouncing object after sprinting for fifty or sixty yards. Here’s a great example of a punt that the kicking team saved from bouncing into the end zone:
Another strategy is to aim for a corner of the field so that it either goes out of bounds or it’s harder for the punt returner to find space to dodge around the guys trying to tackle him. This strategy is called a “coffin corner” punt. Here’s a great example of a successful one:
Playing on the unit that covers punts for the kicking team can also be exciting because you and your buddies get to (if all goes well) tackle the punt returner. If you like playing football, it’s probably in part because you like to hit people in a completely sanctioned way. It’s pretty satisfying to watch too unless it gets too violent. Here’s a prime example of good punt coverage that ends in a decisive but not cringe worthy hit:
Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.
Yesterday — Wednesday, September 24
More champagne in baseball — It’s traditional in baseball to celebrate division titles or even just making the playoffs in flamboyant fashion. This tradition has evolved over time and today it involves wearing ski goggles and spraying champagne all over the locker room. For a sport whose regular season is an almost-every-day grind with teams playing 162 games over only around 180 days, the release is well earned. Yesterday the L.A. Dodgers clinched their division, the National League West division and celebrated ecstatically after beating the San Francisco Giants 9-1. Line: I should celebrate my next achievement at work that way… Wonder what would happen to me if I did?
ESPN VIP suspended — Bill Simmons is one of the biggest names in sports media. He’s one of the original independent bloggers but as long since moved into the mainstream media within ESPN. He’s now a television personality, the driving force behind Grantland.com, a television producer, and one of the biggest podcasters out there. None of that kept ESPN from suspending him for three weeks for (we assume) critical comments he made about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on his latest podcast. This suspension is a big news item because of Simmons’ celebrity and because it fans the flames of outrage among people already angry at sports establishments. There’s a #freesimmons going around on twitter with some great stuff which, as of now is the third highest trending topic on all of twitter. The first is just “Bill Simmons”… so yeah, people are paying attention to this story. Line: No matter how big you get, you’re still an employee, I guess. [Lots of people are also saying:] Wow, that’s one more week than the NFL originally gave Ray Rice for the domestic violence itself.
When and how did the Asian Games start and how are they different from the Olympics?
Thank you,
Jeehae
— — —
Dear Jeehae,
The Asian Games are a lot like the Olympics. They’re held every four years and they are an international multi-sport event. Right now they are happening in Incheon, South Korea, where they will continue until October 4. They vary from the Olympics mainly because they only welcome competitors from Asian countries instead of the whole world. They also have some very interesting different sports.
According to Wikipedia, the Asian Games were born after World War Two out of a desire to find a non-violent way of expressing “Asian dominance.” The first games were held in 1951 in New Delhi and consisted of fifty seven events in six sports: “Athletics, aquatics—broken into diving, swimming, and water polo disciplines—basketball, cycling—road cycling and track cycling—football, and weightlifting” although there was also a non-medal event that crowned the “Mr. Asia of 1951” based on “physical development, looks, and personality”. From the beginning, the competition was modeled on the Olympics. People even called the first Asian Games the, “First Asiad” similarly to how an Olympics may be called the “14th Olympiad” or “26th Olympiad.”
The Asian games are not alone in being an Olympic-like international sports event restricted to some smaller group. There are many other similar events, including the Francophone games, the All-Africa Games, and the Islamic Solidarity Games. There’s even a Bolivarian Games for “countries liberated by Simón Bolívar.” There are 45 countries eligible to compete in the 2014 Asian Games and all have sent teams. The two biggest teams are the Chinese with 894 participants and South Korea with 883. The smallest are Brunei with 11 and Bhutan with 16. Saudi Arabia is the only country not to send any women as part of their team.
One of the key differences between the Asian Games and the Olympics are the inclusion of some sports more popular in Asia than in the rest of the world. Here are some examples:
Wushu — a form of martial arts that includes a solo performance judged sort of like figure skating and an opponent based sparring component.
Soft tennis — which is just like tennis but played with (wait for it…) “soft rubber balls.”
Sepak takraw — which is Volleyball with a woven rattan ball where players are not allowed to use their hands, just like in soccer.
Kabaddi — a sport that sounds totally fascinating to me. It seems to be a combination of capture the flag, tag, wrestling, and holding your breath.
If you’re anything like me, or even if you’re not, you might be wanting to watch some of this now, especially the Kabaddi! I can’t quite tell if you can watch events live anywhere (and even if you could, you’d have to wake up in the middle of the night to do so from the United States,) but you can get highlight packages at eversport.tv. The official website for the 2014 Asian games is here and you can also follow them on Twitter.
From EPSN comes a fascinating story by Uli Hesse who writes about little known rules of international soccer:
It serves as a reminder that what we call national football teams do not all represent a nation. They don’t even represent a country. They are merely teams that represent an association.
That is why many countries have some sort of hidden football history, full of teams that few people know about even though they once were official sides playing official games.
The punt is a unique and important play in football. Punting is the most common way that possession moves from one team to the other. As such, it’s a transitional moment, and like many transitional moments, it’s fascinating because it has so many different possible outcomes.
To understand the punt, it’s important to have a quick refresher on how downs work in football. In the National Football League, whenever a team has the ball, they have four downs or attempts to move the ball ten yards. Thus, first down and ten means they are on their first chance of four to move the ball ten yards. If they run the ball two yards on their first try, the next down will be called second down and eight (to go). If they try four times and don’t travel ten yards, the other team will get the ball wherever the first team had it when they failed to get those last yards. Instead of allowing that to happen, a team can (and often does) choose to kick the ball. If they are close enough to their opponent’s end-zone, teams will usually try a field goal (kick the ball between the uprights, get three points.) If not, they usually make the decision to punt the ball.
When a team lines up on fourth down to punt the ball, instead of a quarterback behind the center, there’s a specialist player called the punter back there. Being a punter in the NFL is pretty awesome. Last year, punters in the NFL made between $495,000 and $3,250,000! It’s a nice job, but there are only 32 of them around. Punters don’t have quite the pressure on them that field goal kickers do but, like their field goal kicking brethren, they rarely get hit. The punters job is to stand about fifteen yards behind the line of scrimmage, catch the snap that comes spiraling back to him, and then punt the ball.
Lots of things can happen once a team begins to punt:
If it goes out of bounds, the team that didn’t punt (the receiving team) gets the ball wherever it left the field, no matter how high above the ground it was.
If the ball lands on the field and no one from the receiving team touches it, the punting team will race down the field and touch the football. The receiving team gets the ball wherever the punting team first touches it.
If the punt lands in the end-zone or goes out the back of the end-zone, it is a touchback and the receiving team gets the ball on the twenty yard line.
If a player from the receiving team catches the punt (or picks it up from the ground) he can run with the football. Wherever he gets tackled or goes out of bounds is where the receiving team gets to start with the ball. Normal rules apply to this runner, so if the kicking team can knock the ball out of his hands, that’s a fumble and fair game for anyone to pick up.
If someone on the receiving team tries to catch the ball but he flubs it and it falls to the ground, or if the punt just bounces off anyone from the receiving team, then the kicking team can grab the ball and they get it back for their offense! There’s usually a wild free-for-all when this happens.
Because it’s potentially pretty dangerous to be looking up in the air to catch a punt while players from the kicking team are sprinting at you trying to hit you as hard as they can, the player from the receiving team who is tasked with catching the ball can call a Fair Catch by waving their hand up in the air before catching the punt. If they call a fair catch, the opposing team is not allowed to hit them but they cannot run with the ball either. The receiving team gets the ball wherever it is caught.
The punt can be blocked by the receiving team before it gets going. When this happens, there’s a scramble to grab the ball. If the receiving team, which blocked the ball, gets it first, they can run with it as far as they can. If the kicking team gets it, they give up possession wherever they get control of the ball. In the odd case that the kicking team catches the blocked punt before it hits the ground, they can run with it!
Football is all about technicalities, isn’t it? They’re more fun when you understand them. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at how punts can be exciting for each team.
Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.
Yesterday — Tuesday, September 23
The Pirates Make the Playoffs — Before last year, the Pirates hadn’t made the playoffs since 1992. Now they’ve made it twice in a row! That’s an impressive turn-around for the long-suffering franchise. They clinched their playoff spot last night by beating the Atlanta Braves 3-2. They don’t get to rest now though, because playoff seeding is a big deal and they still have a chance to catch some of the teams ahead of them, including their division leader, the St. Louis Cardinals. According to Playoff Magic, the Cardinals magic number over the Pirates is four. And if you don’t know what that means, you should read this! Line: I’m excited the Pirates are back in the playoffs. I love their throwback caps!
Hockey? Hockey is back? — That’s right! Preseason hockey began this week. Of the big sports, hockey probably has the smallest fan base but their fans tend to be passionate about the sport. With temperatures still in the seventies across the country, it’s hard to believe it’s hockey season again, but it will be soon. Line: Did you know hockey preseason games have started?
If the sports fan in your life loves football and history, this beautiful and comprehensive The Genealogy of Football Teams poster from HistoryShots might be a perfect gift. The 40″ by 21″ poster tracks the names, locations, divisions, conferences, and existence of all of the professional football teams from today all the way back to around 1900. Here are some of the historical highlights:
St. Louis named their team the All-Stars in the 1920s. It folded after a couple seasons.
Boston’s first football team, in the 1930s, was named the Braves. They changed their name to Redskins and then moved to Washington D.C. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Patriots came into existence. Between the Redskins moving to Washington and the Patriots being created, the only time Boston had a team was during World War Two when they had a team called [gasp] the Boston Yanks!
World War Two created a shortage of players, so some teams merged during that time, often with rivals. My favorite tidbit is that the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles merged to become the “Steagles.” Try that one out at a cocktail party in Central Pennsylvania soon!
Then there’s just great names that haven’t survived, like the Los Angeles Dons, the Providence Steam Roller, the Staten Island Stapletons, and the Dayton Triangles.
HistoryShots is the product of partners Larry Gormley and Bill Younker. Their stated goal is to “create visual stories about subjects and topics by combining deep amounts of data with thoughtful designs” and I think they’ve succeeded with this poster. Nice work, guys! Go buy it on their website here.
So from his spot as gatekeeper, concierge, liaison… [Vice President of Clubhouse Operations, Rob] McDonald has not only watched as the Nationals have transformed from baseball’s Island of Misfit Toys into an organization that expects to compete for a division title every season, but he has helped shape it, in tiny but tangible ways.
“The reality is,” [baseball player, Drew] Storen said, “I’m pretty terrible at life during the season. These guys take the pressure off.”
