Tag: characters

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

Who, when, how?

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

What’s the plot of Super Bowl 50?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Super Bowl 50 – Meet the Carolina Panthers defense

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

There’s a cliche in football that “defense wins championships.” This year, it will definitely be true. No matter whether Carolina or Denver wins the Super Bowl, many will point to the defensive side of the ball as the reason for their victory. Football Outsiders, a website that produces innovative and trustworthy football statistics concludes that Denver had the best defense this year and that Carolina had the second best defense. To get a better appreciation for the defensive side of the ball, let’s explore some of the most important players. We already looked at Denver, now let’s focus on Carolina.

 

 

What’s the story with the defensive linemen on the Carolina Panthers?

Star Lotulelei and Kawann Short – The heart of the Panthers defense are their two young defensive tackles, Lotulelei and Short. Lotulelei and Short came into the league together, both drafted by the Panthers in the 2013 NFL draft. They share some similarities, both having been shockingly disregarded by major football powerhouse colleges before becoming stars on smaller teams — Purdue for Short and Utah for Lotulelei. Then, they both missed their chance to optimize their draft status, Lotulelei because of a virus that caused his heart to show as concerning on a pre-combine medical screen, and Short because of a hamstring injury. They’re not the same people by any means, Lotulelei spent the first nine years of his life in Tonga, Short was a two-sport star growing up in Chicago, where he wowed people by dunking despite his 300 lbs bulk. This year, both players have become (almost) household names thanks to their great play. Although both are capable of playing each other’s role, Lotulelei tends to occupy offensive linemen and target running backs while Short uses his overpowering strength or underhanded trickiness to get to opposing quarterbacks.

What’s the story with the linebackers on the Carolina Panthers?

Luke Kuechly – Middle linebacker, Luke Kuechly is literally at the center of the Panthers defense and he’s figuratively its heart. He’ll be wearing the green dot on his helmet which signifies that he is the only defensive player who gets the play calls radioed in from the coach and it’s his job to communicate them out to the rest of his teammates. Experiment for a few plays and just watch him — he wears number 59 — and marvel at how quickly he figures out what the offense is going to do and gets himself into a position to help stop them from doing it.

Thomas Davis – Davis is that guy you loved to hate in high school. Actually, check that — your high school had no one like Thomas Davis in it. But you would have hated him if he had been there. In high school, Davis played basketball, baseball, football, and ran track. He was great at everything. He played college football in his home state at the University of Georgia before being drafted in the first round of the NFL draft by Carolina in 2005. His first three years in the league were a flash of potential and budding greatness. Then in 2010, he tore the ACL in his right knee. Then he did it again. Then, amazingly, he did it again. Same knee. No one had ever come back from three ACL injuries on the same knee, but Davis was determined to be the first. Amazingly, he’s back and playing as well and seemingly as fast as he ever has. It seemed for a minute like his story this year would have a sad coda to it when he broke his forearm in the NFC championship game two weeks ago but Davis, thanks to a 3D printed brace, doesn’t plan to let that stop him from playing in the Super Bowl.

What’s the story with the defensive backs on the Carolina Panthers?

Josh Norman – If you had surveyed a group of football fans a year ago today about who corner back Josh Norman was, you would probably have gotten a lot of blank stares. Now, after the season he had this year, he’s a household name. Norman is one of the rarest commodities in football, a shutdown corner. He will line up opposite a team’s best wide receiver and basically erase him from the game. Quarterbacks have learned that throwing to a player guarded by Norman is close to a no-win situation and it can be a giant loss if Norman gets his hands on the ball. Especially with Peyton Manning as diminished as he is, I would expect him to simply ignore the player that Norman is guarding. This will probably be frustrating for Norman, who likes to make plays, but it will be extraordinarily helpful to the Panthers, who get to focus their attention elsewhere, safe in the knowledge that Norman can take care of himself.

 

Super Bowl 50 – Meet the Denver Broncos defense

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

There’s a cliche in football that “defense wins championships.” This year, it will definitely be true. No matter whether Carolina or Denver wins the Super Bowl, many will point to the defensive side of the ball as the reason for their victory. Football Outsiders, a website that produces innovative and trustworthy football statistics concludes that Denver had the best defense this year and that Carolina had the second best defense. To get a better appreciation for the defensive side of the ball, let’s explore some of the most important players. First, we’ll look at Denver.

What’s the story with the defensive linemen on the Denver Broncos?

Derek Wolfe – Wolfe is a gargantuan defensive lineman. He’s listed as being 6’5″ tall and 285 lbs. Even in a sport like football, where giants are a run-of-the-mill sight, Wolfe sticks out. As a 3-4 defensive end (if you don’t know what that means and want to, read the article on defensive linemen linked above,) Wolfe is expected to play a hybrid game, half attacking the quarterback, half being the first line of defense against the run. Wolfe provides both of those services to his team spectacularly. In fact, he has been so spectacular this year compared to his first few years in the league, that a neutral observer is forced to wonder how he improved so much. Add that wonder to the four game suspension he served at the start of the year for breaking the NFL substance policy (he claimed he took a medicine he didn’t know was against the rules) and you’ve probably got your answer. The truth is, most football fans don’t actually care very much if professional players are taking drugs to stay on top, they just enjoy watching them play.

What’s the story with the linebackers on the Denver Broncos?

Von Miller – Von Miller is a swashbuckling linebacker. He lives to sack quarterbacks. And he is great at it, potentially historically great. At the start of this season, he became the third fastest player to reach the 50 sack mark, behind only Reggie White and Derrick Thomas, both retired hall of fame players. Although Miller has his own unfortunate past (a six game performance enhancing drug suspension, several speeding tickets, an arrest for failure to pay the speeding tickets…) he’s also an enjoyably colorful character. He’s the only one in the game who could inspire this paragraph in a Boston Globe article: “Chicken farming is just one of his many odd passions. He wears thick, plastic-rimmed “geek chic” glasses, wears a giant Russian fur trapper hat and eccentric cowboy boots, and covered his body in random tattoos, including one of a chicken, or “Chicken Fred,” on his leg. He was the only rookie to put his name on the NFL Players Association’s lawsuit against the NFL in the 2011 lockout. His sack dances and celebrations are worthy of “Amercia’s Best Dance Crew.”

DeMarcus Ware – DeMarcus Ware is a savvy veteran still capable of making explosive plays. He played nine years for the Dallas Cowboys and was the team’s defensive leader. Because the Cowboys are simultaneously the most loved and most hated team in the league, this made him a very well-known player. Even the most ardent Cowboys haters developed a grudging respect for Ware, particularly because during his time with the team, they never won very much or succeeded in the playoffs, despite Ware’s efforts. He left the team in 2014 and signed with the Broncos. He has flourished there, despite his age, and provided both mentorship and high quality performances on the field.

What’s the story with the defensive backs on the Denver Broncos?

Aquib Talib – Cornerback Talib is a perfect example of how contextual success in the NFL can be. As a highly respected player in college, Talib was drafted in the first round of the NFL draft. That guarantees a player an enviable first contract but it’s no guarantee of success. Success is much more multi-factored than that and perhaps the biggest factor is which team a player is drafted by. Talib was taken by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were just entering a dysfunctional phase that has lasted until today. Talib never quite lived up to his billing there. Then, in 2012, he signed as a free agent with the New England Patriots, one of the most ruthlessly functional teams in the league. He was a star. From the Patriots, he moved to the Broncos, another high functioning organization, and has continued to be an excellent player. Context matters. Talib is a big, physical corner who is as likely to knock a receiver off their timing at the line of scrimmage (contact with a receiver is allowed for the first five yards from the line of scrimmage) as he is to drop back and try to run with him.

 

Super Bowl 50 – Who is Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera?

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

Head coach of an NFL football team is an enormously important and high profile job populated mostly by even more enormously self-important men who never miss an opportunity to raise their profile. As such, it’s actually surprising how little press the two Super Bowl coaches this year are receiving. Both Carolina head coach Ron Rivera and Denver head coach Gary Kubiak are the exceptions that prove the rule. Despite their teams making the Super Bowl, neither one is the center of attention. The plot of this game does not revolve around either of them. They aren’t groundbreaking “geniuses.” Nor is this a redemptive journey for either of them. That doesn’t mean that either of them is uninteresting or has a boring back story though, so without further ado, let’s explore who they are and how they got here.

What’s Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera’s story?

This is not coach Ron Rivera’s first trip to the Super Bowl. He played linebacker on the legendary 1985 Chicago Bears team, often brought up as having had one the best defenses of all time. Rivera played linebacker for the Bears for nine years before retiring and moving first into the booth as a TV football analyst and then into the coaching fraternity. Until he was hired in 2011 as head coach of the Carolina Panthers, he had always been a defensive coach — either coaching the linebackers on the team or the entire defense.

The best way to illustrate Ron Rivera’s story as a coach in the NFL is to examine his nickname — Riverboat Ron. Riverboat Ron refers to the gambling done on riverboat.

— quick historical diversion: This gambling has had two waves — during the 19th century, when riverboats were a primary form of transportation, professional gamblers used them as an easy way to find bored rich people with nothing to do, swiftly separate them from some of their money, and just as swiftly exit their presence. Once steamboats were superseded by other modes of travel, this habit died down. It was resurrected in the late 1980s when a clever Iowan figured out that a casino, located in a traveling riverboat, would not be under the same gambling prohibitions that a static, land-based casino would be. This trick turned into a trend, and so the second great era of riverboat gambling started. Now-a-days, many of the riverboat casinos are either “boats in moats” that never travel anywhere or even simply buildings built on stilts over water. end diversion — 

Rivera got his nickname during the 2013 season. He started the year on shaky ground, having gone an uninspiring 13-19 in his first two seasons. He was particularly under fire among fans and in the media for being overly conservative. His decisions to do things that were widely perceived as safe but misguided, mostly preferring to punt or kick field goals on fourth down instead of “going for it” were blamed for his team’s poor record in close games. This pattern continued for the first two games of the 2013 season. In the third game, it reversed. In the third game, Rivera made the “aggressive” choice and it helped his team win the next game. He cemented this change of tactics by making a similar choice in each of the next five games. That was enough of a sample to seem like he had changed, not just his tactics, but his personality as well. Riverboat Ron had earned his nickname.

According to Wikipedia, Rivera is not the biggest fan of his nickname. He prefers to think of what he does as “calculated risk taking” not gambling. Many football fans would disagree even with that. Just before the time Rivera made his “transformation,” football thought went through its own transition in how it thought about those decisions. Statisticians who descended toward football from other sports, like baseball which had an earlier statistical revolution, made it clear that almost all coaches had been doing their teams a disservice by being far too conservative. This gave rise to clever gags like the New York Times Fourth Down Bot which analyzes fourth down situations and comes up with the statistically correct answer. Seen through the eyes of macro football history, Rivera did not transform from a conservative to a radical coach, he simply adjusted to the new conservatism.

Whatever he has done as a coach has been greatly assisted by the remarkably talented players he has on offense and even more so on defense. These days, Rivera is looked at as a very good leader who delegates well to clever assistant coaches and creates a wonderful environment for his many talented and quirky players to thrive.

Super Bowl 50 – Who is Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak?

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

Head coach of an NFL football team is an enormously important and high profile job populated mostly by even more enormously self-important men who never miss an opportunity to raise their profile. As such, it’s actually surprising how little press the two Super Bowl coaches this year are receiving. Both Carolina head coach Ron Rivera and Denver head coach Gary Kubiak are the exceptions that prove the rule. Despite their teams making the Super Bowl, neither one is the center of attention. The plot of this game does not revolve around either of them. They aren’t groundbreaking “geniuses.” Nor is this a redemptive journey for either of them. That doesn’t mean that either of them is uninteresting or has a boring back story though, so without further ado, let’s explore who they are and how they got here.

What’s Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak’s story?

Gary Kubiak has been connected in some way with the Denver Broncos for most of his adult life. He was drafted as a quarterback by the team in the eighth round of the 1983 NFL draft. This was the same draft in which the team acquired quarterback John Elway, the number one overall draft pick that year, in a trade. So, Kubiak was not drafted to start, but rather to be the backup quarterback — the break glass in case of emergency option. He remained with the Broncos, playing only when Elway was injured, for his entire nine year career. After he retired, he went almost immediately into coaching. His first job as a coach was for the Texas A&M’s college team, where he served as their running backs coach. This is somewhat remarkable — a former player who wants to get into coaching almost always coaches his own position first. The fact that Kubiak’s first job was a cross-positional job says a lot about who he was as a player (observant, interested in what was going on around him even if it wasn’t directly his responsibility, etc.) and a lot about who he was going to become as a coach. From Texas A&M, Kubiak moved into the NFL as an assistant coach, first for the San Francisco 49ers and then for the Denver Broncos, before getting his first shot at a head coaching job for the Houston Texans in 2006.

In Houston, where he coached for eight seasons, Kubiak became a known quantity. He coaches like an ideal backup quarterback plays the position: steadily, unspectacularly, and reliably. He gets the job done. Look at his seasonal records in Houston, where he inherited an unsteady team:

  • 2006 – 6-10
  • 2007 – 8-8
  • 2008 – 8-8
  • 2009 – 9-7
  • 2010 – 6-10
  • 2011 – 10-6
  • 2012 – 12-4
  • 2013 – 2-11 (fired mid-season)

Until that last season, it’s hard to imagine a more mundane but functionally successful coaching record. As was foreshadowed by his first job as a coach, Kubiak is known for leading offenses that excel at running the ball and whose quarterbacks succeed through being an unremarkable cog in the system. Kubiak doesn’t draw a lot of attention to himself on the sidelines. He doesn’t throw temper-tantrums at refs or scream at his players. The only time he ever became the story was when he collapsed on the sideline in 2013 and had to be taken to a hospital. He had suffered the precursor to a stroke but was thankfully able to avoid any long-term harm.

After a year as offensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens, Kubiak was hired to become head coach of the Denver Broncos this season by none other than John Elway, Kubiak’s old quarterback buddy from his playing career. This creates an interesting dynamic. After backing up Elway for nine years as a player, Kubiak is back in a subordinate position to him. That’s one way of looking at it, but although team presidents and general managers like Elway can hire and fire coaches, the failure of a head coach is also the primary reason why presidents/general managers lose their jobs. It’s a much more symbiotic relationship than you would expect.

The more interesting plot with Kubiak as coach this year has been his interactions with quarterback Peyton Manning. For most of his amazing career, Peyton Manning has been de-facto offensive coordinator as well as quarterback, designing the offense and calling the shots. Kubiak, as we now know, wants a quarterback to fit into his system, not the other way around. This season could easily be characterized as a struggle between Manning and Kubiak over control of the offense. Because they both have the same goal in mind — winning the Super Bowl — it would be more accurate to say it’s been a collaborative struggle to find a blended approach that works for both men and wins football games. Finally, in the last couple games, they seem to have found it. Kubiak calls plays that put Manning in positions he is comfortable with and Manning executes them in a typically Kubiakian conservative way. It’s gotten them to the Super Bowl. We’ll find out on Sunday if it’s good enough to win.

2016 NFL Championship Preview: Arizona at Carolina

The NFL season is like a good season of television. Like the old standard for television shows, it takes place over 22 weeks, with one game (episode) per week. Throughout the season, and over many seasons, football fans are treated to great character development and consistently intriguing plots. The competition to win a Super Bowl, which only one team can be succeed at each year, often feels as epic as Game of Thrones, Scandal, or Downton Abbey. I’m always surprised when I talk to non-sports fans who are themselves surprised that I think about football in terms of plot and characters. I don’t think I’m unique among sports fans for following sports in this way, although perhaps most people wouldn’t use those terms. In any case, at this point, with only two episodes and three games left, this year’s arcs feel a little less epic than most. One reason for that is that the last four teams alive in the playoffs are the top four seeds, ranked one and two in each of the two conferences, the AFC and NFC. By earning a top-two seed, these teams got a bye, which means they took the first week of the playoffs off. So, we don’t have a team this weekend that’s coming off two playoff wins, with at least one surprise win. On the other hand, we do have the four teams that played the best over the course of the regular season. We’re set up perfectly for things to get truly epic very soon.

In this post, we’ll preview the plot and characters of the second NFL Championship game, the NFC Championship between the Carolina Panthers and the Arizona Cardinals. This game is in North Carolina on Sunday, January 24, 2016 at 6:40 p.m. ET on Fox.

What’s the Plot?

In the NFL these days, the offense almost always provides the most compelling characters who drive the plot of the game. That’s true in this game, but it’s worth admitting right up at the top that it’s defense which has driven both of these teams to the success they’ve had this year. Both teams have marvelous defenses, but because they’re evenly marvelous (Football Outsiders has Carolina as the second best defense in the league, Arizona the third,) they cancel each other out, plot-wise. When it comes to defense in this game, it’s safe to say, both teams will be great.

On the offensive side of the ball, we do have some wonderful contrasts. Carolina’s offense has a clear and unquestioned leader in quarterback Cam Newton. A dual running and passing threat, Newton is a young veteran at 26 who is having the best season of his career. He will almost definitely win the league Most Valuable Player award for his play this season. He probably would win the award even if he had had legendary supporting players, but it doesn’t hurt that most people think the other players on the offense are extremely average. Running back Jonathan Stewart has been around for a while, and shown promise before, but has always been brought down by one injury or another. The Panthers wide receivers are what turn Newton’s season from great to spectacular: Tedd Ginn Jr., Philly Brown, Devin Funchess, and Jerricho Cotchery are all totally unremarkable, below-average NFL wide receivers.

Arizona is almost the complete opposite. They’ve taken a very, very good but not great quarterback, Carson Palmer, and surrounded him with an extremely deep and talented bunch of players at wide receiver and running back. There are descriptions of most of these characters farther below, so I won’t go into them too deeply here, but it’s safe to say that any of Arizona’s top five wide receivers would be Carolina’s best or second best wide receiver if they switched teams. At running back, Arizona is actually using their third starter this year, but he may be their best. David Johnson is a rookie who played last year at the University of Northern Iowa. He’s looked completely at ease, and at times dominant, as a starting running back in the NFL. Impressive!

Arizona quarterback, Carson Palmer, is just slightly too good to turn this game into a referendum on whether it’s better in the NFL to have a great quarterback but nothing else on offense or an average quarterback surrounded by great skill players. Instead, let’s take the plot one step back from that dramatic precipice and simply say it’s a referendum on whether an absolutely great quarterback can elevate his supporting characters over a more well-rounded offense with better receivers and running backs but a slightly less dynamic quarterback.

Who are the main characters on the Arizona Cardinals?

Bruce Arians – Head Coach Bruce Arians is almost always the biggest character in the room. He’s an iconoclast who wears his weirdness literally on his head. He’s famous for wearing kangol hats. When it comes to football, he’s ready to try just about anything that might work but he has some clear preferences. On offense, he wants to throw the ball farther down the field more often than any other coach in the league. This high-risk, high-reward strategy asks a lot of the team’s quarterbacks and offensive linemen, which has been a problem in the last two years.

Carson Palmer – The guy throwing the ball down the field for Arians is Carson Palmer. Palmer has had one of the most long-lasting tragic careers in sports. Early in his career, he was seen as being on track to be one of the truly great quarterbacks of his generation. Then, on the first throw of his first playoff game, he completed a beautiful, long pass to receiver Chris Henry (who has since died, so this is a doubly tragic play in retrospect,) and was hit low by an opposing linemen and tore his ACL. The injury was not a career ending injury (clearly) but it altered his path significantly. He’s now seen as a very good player whose greatness was robbed from him, not once, but several times thanks to other injuries. At 36, this isn’t his last shot to reclaim that greatness, but it may be his best shot. It’s hard not to root for Palmer.

Larry Fitzgerald / John Brown / Michael Floyd / Jaron Brown / J.J. Nelson – This is the best set of five wide receivers that any NFL team has ever had. Other teams (including the Pittsburgh Steelers this year) might have had a better top three, but I don’t think any team was as good and as deep as the Cardinals. Larry Fitzgerald (who remains the best football player I’ve ever seen in person. I had the unfortunate pleasure of watching him go for 207 yards and 2 touchdowns in the first half against Rutgers in 2003.) is the old man of the bunch. A sensational player who has transitioned into being the world’s best possession receiver, capable of picking up 8 yards whenever his team needs him to. The other four are different varieties of deep threat — insanely fast dudes who are good at running past their defenders and catching the ball. If they start getting it going, just watch and marvel at them.

Who are the main characters on the Carolina Panthers?

Cam Newton – Quarterback Cam Newton is, and always has been a lightning rod for controversy. In college, he won a national championship with Auburn, and it was an even more open secret than with most high profile college players that he had taken fairly large sums of money under the table for playing there. In the NFL, he’s been the subject of years of criticism for being too self-impressed, too brash, both criticisms that have suspiciously racial overtones. From a strictly football standpoint, he’s been an amazing success. He’s a combination of one of the top ten pure passers in the league with a top ten running back in a single body. Newton ran for over 600 yards and 10 touchdowns this season. This makes him an unusual double-threat for opposing defenses to fret about, especially when the Panthers get close to the goal line.

Josh Norman – If you had surveyed a group of football fans a year ago today about who corner back Josh Norman was, you would probably have gotten a lot of blank stares. Now, after the season he had this year, he’s a household name. Norman is one of the rarest commodities in football, a shutdown corner. He will line up opposite a team’s best wide receiver and basically erase him from the game. Quarterbacks have learned that throwing to a player guarded by Norman is close to a no-win situation and it can be a giant loss if Norman gets his hands on the ball. One thing that Norman doesn’t normally do though, is move into the slot (when there are three or more wide receivers on the field, the slot refers to wide receivers that are not one of the ones on the outside edge of the formation,) so he probably won’t be shadowing Larry Fitzgerald.

Luke Kuechly – Middle linebacker, Luke Kuechly is literally at the center of the Panthers defense and he’s figuratively its heart. He’ll be wearing the green dot on his helmet which signifies that he is the only defensive player who gets the play calls radioed in from the coach and it’s his job to communicate them out to the rest of his teammates. Experiment for a few plays and just watch him — he wears number 59 — and marvel at how quickly he figures out what the offense is going to do and gets himself into a position to help stop them from doing it.

Who is going to win?

The obvious choice here is Carolina. They are playing at home and their home field, which will be wet, cold, and in bad shape after a snow storm, should favor their more physical run-laden attack. They also came very close to going undefeated this year and n their first playoff game last week, went up 31-0 against the Seattle Seahawks in the first half, one of the most impressive performances I’ve ever seen. Compared to that, Arizona looked downright shaky in their first game. Carson Palmer barely played well enough to win, and the team needed overtime and extraordinary heroics from Larry Fitzgerald just to beat the Green Bay Packers, a team not nearly as good as Carolina. Despite all that, or maybe even because of it, I’m going to guess that Arizona wins this game. Both teams’ defenses will pose real problems for the opposition’s offense. I think it’s possible that at home, with all the expectations of being the number one seed and almost going undefeated, there’s a chance this seriously frustrates the Panthers. The Cardinals have struggled before, as recently as last week, and have more recent memories of overcoming. A bad start on offense won’t knock them out of whack, but it might derail the Panthers.

2016 NFL Championship Preview: New England at Denver

The NFL season is like a good season of television. Like the old standard for television shows, it takes place over 22 weeks, with one game (episode) per week. Throughout the season, and over many seasons, football fans are treated to great character development and consistently intriguing plots. The competition to win a Super Bowl, which only one team can be succeed at each year, often feels as epic as Game of Thrones, Scandal, or Downton Abbey. I’m always surprised when I talk to non-sports fans who are themselves surprised that I think about football in terms of plot and characters. I don’t think I’m unique among sports fans for following sports in this way, although perhaps most people wouldn’t use those terms. In any case, at this point, with only two episodes and three games left, this year’s arcs feel a little less epic than most. One reason for that is that the last four teams alive in the playoffs are the top four seeds, ranked one and two in each of the two conferences, the AFC and NFC. By earning a top-two seed, these teams got a bye, which means they took the first week of the playoffs off. So, we don’t have a team this weekend that’s coming off two playoff wins, with at least one surprise win. On the other hand, we do have the four teams that played the best over the course of the regular season. We’re set up perfectly for things to get truly epic very soon.

In this post, we’ll preview the plot and characters of the first NFL Championship game, the AFC Championship between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. This game is in Denver on Sunday, January 24, 2016 at 3 p.m. ET on CBS.

What’s the Plot?

This game is being billed as MANNING VS. BRADY XVII because it is the 17th time the quarterbacks of the teams, Peyton Manning for Denver and Tom Brady for New England, have played each other. That’s a big number for any pair of quarterbacks, but for two who have never been in the same division (and would therefore only play once per year in the regular season,) it’s a huge number. That number includes four playoff games, which is not a surprise because Manning and Brady have been among the most successful quarterbacks in the league over the past fifteen years. This is almost definitely their last meeting in the playoffs. Could there be a better way to end the rivalry? With one last game and a Super Bowl trip on the line?

Until two or three years ago, the conventional way of looking at their rivalry was to believe that Manning was the more prolific player but that Brady was more of a winner. Manning set more records but Brady had a psychological je ne sais quoi that helped him win when the stakes were high. Brady has won four Super Bowls in six Super Bowl appearances, Manning only one in three. Another key difference is that Manning was basically his own coach, managing all of the elements of his team’s offense, while Brady was a masterful piece, but still a cog in a system whose mastermind was coach Bill Belichick. For most of the past fifteen years, you could have a legitimate argument about who was better between the two. Now things have changed, and most people look at Brady and Manning quite differently. At age 38, Brady is still going strong. He looks as good as ever. Calm, almost regal while he plays, and pinpoint accurate as a thrower. Manning, on the other hand, is a mess. His throws wobble all over the place, he was benched for a big portion of the season, and he’s had to accept a form of demotion — he now fits into his coach’s idea about how the offense should operate, not the other way around. The key reason for this change? While each quarterback has suffered a major injury during their career (honestly, how could they not after such long NFL careers?) Brady’s was a torn ACL, something which has become relatively routine to return from, while Manning’s was an unusual neck injury which required spinal surgery and has left him with reduced strength in his throwing arm and a loss of feeling in his hand.

Characterizing a football game as a matchup between two great quarterbacks is a convenient thing to do. Quarterbacks are the highest profile characters and often the single most important players on their teams. With this game in mind, I argued earlier this week that this approach to plot is a legitimate one. Manning vs. Brady is definitely an attractive way of thinking about the plot of this game. Even given the physical disparity between the two quarterbacks’ conditions, it still works. Instead of being an anything you can do, I can do better competition, it’s a pair of individual events. Manning has to overcome his own limitations. He’ll be battling time and his own body to see if he can eek one more great (or, frankly, even average) performance out of himself. Brady will be engaged in a prolonged struggle with an equally daunting but external enemy, Denver’s defense, which is thought of as the very best in the league this year. Whichever team can win their own personal battle will probably win the game.

Who are the main characters on the New England Patriots?

Bill Belichick — It all starts with coach Bill Belichick. Now the longest tenured coach in the league by far (Belichick started in New England in 2000, the next two coaches started at their jobs in 2003 and 2006!), depending on who you talk to, Belichick is thought of as either an evil genius or a benevolent one, but either way, he’s given a lot of the credit for the Patriots’ winning ways. He’s not a stereotypical football coach who screams and yells or tries to motivate his players. He doesn’t give memorable half-time speeches. He just tries (with his assistant coaches) to out-think, out-smart, and out-prepare the opposing team. Before every game, Belichick figures out what the other team is good at and what they’re bad at. Then he decides how to attack them where they’re weak and avoid falling prey to what they are good at. It seems simple, but most teams either can’t figure this out or are unable or unwilling to change what they do fast enough to adjust to their opponent.

Rob Gronkowski — Tight end Rob Gronkowski provides an element of meat to balance Brady and Belichick’s cerebral natures. Gronkowski is a 6’6″ 265 lbs football monster. When he goes down the field to catch a pass, he often looks too big, too fast, and too skilled for the other team to have a chance at stopping him. He looks improbable, like the result of a cheat code in a video game. Then a defender hits him and every Patriots fan in the world gasps. Gronkowski’s one weakness is his health. He seems to always either be seriously injured, hobbled, or one hit away from being one of those things. Right now, reports say he’s suffering from knee and back injuries. Only time will tell if that’s true, but if it isn’t, watch out!

Malcolm Brown / Alan Branch — With Manning limited, the Broncos almost definitely need to run the ball effectively to win this game. The Patriots first line of defense against the run are their two big defensive tackles, Malcolm Brown and Alan Branch. Brown and Branch are classic Patriots finds — the 6’6″, 350 lbs Branch is a veteran player who was cut from several teams before ending up on the Patriots, where he has thrived. The smaller Brown, 6’2″, 320 lbs is a rookie who was picked at the end of the first round by the Patriots in this year’s NFL draft. If these two guys can keep from getting pushed backwards by the Broncos offensive line, it will go a long way toward preventing the Broncos from running effectively.

Who are the main characters on the Denver Broncos?

Demaryius Thomas / Emmanuel Sanders – Wide receivers Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders have to do a better job of helping Peyton Manning drive the Broncos offense than they did last week. Last week, they combined for 125 yards and only caught nine of the 16 balls thrown their way. These are low totals for a team’s best two receivers. They’re very different from one another – Thomas is a prototypical new-age NFL receiver. He’s big, 6’3″ and 230 lbs. and aims to make big plays way down field. Sanders makes up for what he lacks in size, 5’11”, 180 lbs, with quickness and precise route running. His tendency is to catch many short passes and try to turn them into big gains by running after the catch. If anything, Manning’s lack of arm strength makes Sanders an even more ideal teammate.

Derek Wolfe / Von Miller / DeMarcus Ware – Tom Brady is one of the best quarterbacks every, but like all quarterbacks, if you hit him early and often, he can have a bad game. These are the three defenders who are most likely to knock him down and potentially knock him off his game. Wolfe is a gargantuan defensive lineman, Von Miller is a swashbuckling linebacker, and DeMarcus Ware is a savvy veteran still capable of making explosive plays. Watch for these guys to put a little extra mustard on their quarterback hits today…

Who is going to win?

When Denver lost at home in the playoffs last year, it was a stunning loss. The Broncos hadn’t seemed unbeatable, but they were definitely expected to win. This year, despite having the best record in the AFC, their fans are much more wary. If they have hope that Peyton Manning can pull one last (or second to last) rabbit out of his hat, they’re hiding that hope carefully. The Patriots are favored by three points, according to Vegas, which normally gives the home team a three point advantage over however they think the game would go on a neutral field. That means they think the Patriots are actually six points better than the Broncos. I disagree. I think the teams are much closer than that. The Broncos have more talent in their supporting cast, especially on defense, than the Patriots do. Still, the Patriots have the better quarterback and the better coach, and that’s usually enough to win the game, as it will be in this very close AFC Championship game.

2016 NFL Divisional Preview: Pittsburgh at Denver

The Denver Broncos host the Pittsburgh Steelers in the last of the four 2016 National Football League (NFL) Divisional playoff games. This game is on Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 4:40 p.m. ET on CBS.

What’s the Plot?

The worst part of football is how damaging it is to the mind and body of the people who play it. It’s also one of the things that makes football so fascinating. At the team and individual level, football poses questions — how badly do you have to be injured before you stop playing? how effective can you play while injured? how do you replace an injured player? how can you overcome the loss of one, two, five, ten injured players — and demands answers. This game is largely about those questions. Can the Pittsburgh Steelers overcome the loss of their best running back and wide receiver? Can their quarterback play effectively with an injured shoulder? Were the Denver Broncos right to choose to go with their once legendary but now seriously diminished quarterback over the younger healthier choice? The answers to those questions will determine who wins and who loses.

Who are the main characters on the Pittsburgh Steelers?

Ben Roethlisberger – Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is the biggest mystery of this game. He injured his throwing shoulder in last week’s game against the Bengals, left the game, and then heroically returned to help his team to victory. During the week, he claimed that he had torn ligaments and that he was going to play. Roethlisberger is famous both for playing through injuries that would leave most humans curled into a small ball, moaning, AND for exaggerating the extent of his injuries. Are his ligaments really torn or is he playing it up to make him feel tougher for playing? His teammates won’t care as long as he makes it out onto the field and can throw the ball. The first is a certainty, the second a mystery.

Martavis Bryant/Marcus Wheaton/Darrius Heyward-Bey  – The Pittsburgh Steelers started the season with one of the most talented trios of wide receivers in the league. Antonio Brown was the leader of the bunch but he will not be playing today due to a concussion he suffered last week. One of his normal two wingmen, Martavis Bryant or Marcus Wheaton will have to step up to replace him. Bryant and Wheaton are both young receivers whose ceilings seem limitless but neither is as good as Brown. Sliding into the third wide receiver position from the bench will be Darrius Heyward-Bey, whose main claim to fame so far was that the Oakland Raiders selected him way too early in the NFL draft. What these three receivers have is speed. Each of them is freakishly fast, even for football players. There will be two or three times during the game when one of them gets behind his defender. If Roethlisberger has enough arm strength to get them the ball, there could be a long touchdown or three.

Who are the main characters on the Denver Broncos?

Peyton Manning – Quarterback Peyton Manning will be an obvious choice for the NFL Hall of Fame when he retires. He’s the most prolific passer in league history. At 38, after multiple neck surgeries, he’s clearly a diminished player. During the first half of the season, the Broncos were winning despite his poor play. During the second half, they played without him, going with the younger Brock Osweiler. In the final game of the season, Osweiler struggled and Manning was called on to come in and win the game. He did and now the team has chosen to go back to him for the playoffs. Manning, even at 60% of what he used to be, is a very good quarterback. Manning at 40% of what he used to be is a liability to his team. Which Manning will we see?

Derek Wolfe / Von Miller / DeMarcus Ware – These are the three defenders who are most likely to hit Ben Roethlisberger and knock him and his injured shoulder out of the game. Wolfe is a gargantuan defensive lineman, Von Miller is a swashbuckling linebacker, and DeMarcus Ware is a savvy veteran still capable of making explosive plays. Watch for these guys to put a little extra mustard on their quarterback hits today…

Aquib Talib / Chris Harris – The flip-side of the Steelers speedy receivers are the Denver Broncos two cornerbacks. Aquib Talib and Chris Harris are the best pair of pass defenders in the league. Antonio Brown might have been enough to get these guys sweating, but without him in the game, Talib and Harris will probably be able to take two Steelers receivers out of the game and leave their teammates to worry about the rest.

Who is going to win?

The only thing that could keep the Denver Broncos from winning would be a total and complete collapse from quarterback Peyton Manning. With one of the best defenses in the league going up against a reeling Pittsburgh Steelers offense, the Broncos may only need one or two touchdowns from their offense to win. I trust that Manning has enough football wherewithal left in his body to do at least that.

2016 NFL Divisional Preview: Green Bay at Arizona

The Arizona Cardinals host the Green Bay Packers in the second of the four 2016 National Football League (NFL) Divisional playoff games. This game is on Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 8:15 p.m. ET on NBC.

What’s the Plot?

The Green Bay Packers were generally thought of as the least likely of the four Wild Card teams last weekend to win on the road. They may have been, but they still traveled to Washington and won their game convincingly. The spark from their offense that had been missing for the last three quarters of the season was back. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers looked happy and everything was rosy in Green Bay. Now, less than a week later, they are back on the road facing a rested and daunting Arizona Cardinals team. The Cardinals have been a potentially great team for the past few years but each year their potential is stolen from them by dint of an injury to quarterback Carson Palmer. There are lots of great players on the Cardinals (their depth is impressive) but only one is irreplaceable. This year, Palmer is finally healthy for the playoffs and it will be a thrill to see how far this team can get… as long as he stays healthy.

Who are the main characters on the Green Bay Packers?

Aaron Rodgers – I wrote last week about the mystery of Aaron Rodgers. Generally thought of as the best quarterback alive, he had been having a terrible season. True, he was missing (and will be until next year) his best wide receiver, but that shouldn’t be enough to totally thwart such a great player. Whatever accounted for Rodgers’ malaise, he shook it off and played an amazing game. He’ll need to be even better this week for the Packers to have a shot against the Cardinals.

Mike McCarthy – Mike McCarthy has been the coach of the Green Bay Packers for the last ten years. That’s a long time in football terms and it’s also Aaron Rodgers’ entire career. Despite having won a Super Bowl in 2010 and returned to the playoffs every year since then, McCarthy is not thought of as a great coach. My guess is that this is due to a combination of Rodgers getting the bulk of the credit and McCarthy making too many obvious time-management blunders at the end of games. Last week’s victory over Washington quieted some of McCarthy’s critics.

The offensive line – A few weeks ago, when these two teams played in the regular season, the Cardinals blew the Packers out and a big reason for that was the Packers offensive line. In that game, two of their best linemen were out injured. The team should get at least one and perhaps both of them back for this one and they hope the results will be different. As is often said about quarterbacks, you should be able to get a good sense of how well the game is going to go for the Packers by how many times the line lets Aaron Rodgers get hit. As a reminder, this is the line that made news last year for playing Settlers of Catan.

Who are the main characters on the Arizona Cardinals?

Bruce Arians – Head Coach Bruce Arians is almost always the biggest character in the room. He’s an iconoclast who wears his weirdness literally on his head. He’s famous for wearing kangol hats. When it comes to football, he’s ready to try just about anything that might work but he has some clear preferences. On offense, he wants to throw the ball farther down the field more often than any other coach in the league. This high-risk, high-reward strategy asks a lot of the team’s quarterbacks and offensive linemen, which has been a problem in the last two years.

Carson Palmer – The guy throwing the ball down the field for Arians is Carson Palmer. Palmer has had one of the most long-lasting tragic careers in sports. Early in his career, he was seen as being on track to be one of the truly great quarterbacks of his generation. Then, on the first throw of his first playoff game, he completed a beautiful, long pass to receiver Chris Henry (who has since died, so this is a doubly tragic play in retrospect,) and was hit low by an opposing linemen and tore his ACL. The injury was not a career ending injury (clearly) but it altered his path significantly. He’s now seen as a very good player whose greatness was robbed from him, not once, but several times thanks to other injuries. At 36, this isn’t his last shot to reclaim that greatness, but it may be his best shot. It’s hard not to root for Palmer.

Larry Fitzgerald / John Brown / Michael Floyd / Jaron Brown / J.J. Nelson – This is the best set of five wide receivers that any NFL team has ever had. Other teams (including the Pittsburgh Steelers this year) might have had a better top three, but I don’t think any team was as good and as deep as the Cardinals. Larry Fitzgerald (who remains the best football player I’ve ever seen in person. I had the unfortunate pleasure of watching him go for 207 yards and 2 touchdowns in the first half against Rutgers in 2003.) is the old man of the bunch. A sensational player who has transitioned into being the world’s best possession receiver, capable of picking up 8 yards whenever his team needs him to. The other four are different varieties of deep threat — insanely fast dudes who are good at running past their defenders and catching the ball. If they start getting it going, just watch and marvel at them.

Who is going to win?

I don’t think this game is going to be particularly close. Yahoo’s football blog ran an article about this game headlined, “No on expects another blow out when Packers meet Cardinals.” I do. The Cardinals should be able to start scoring and never look back. The Packers might be able to score some but not nearly enough. Cardinals will win by a bunch.

2016 NFL Divisional Preview: Kansas City at New England

The New England Patriots host the Kansas City Chiefs in the first of the four 2016 National Football League (NFL) Wild Card playoff games. This game is on Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 4:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

What’s the Plot?

The New England Patriots are the defending Super Bowl champions but they’re not at full strength. If they were, they would be a giant favorite to win this game. The team the Patriots started the year with looked very much like it could have gone undefeated and won another Super Bowl without too much trouble. Then the injuries started. The Patriots have lost more and more important players than most teams. One question, perhaps the main question coming into this game is: how many of those players will the Patriots have back and at full strength for this game? Those are actually two different questions. The Patriots are planning to have all three of their key pass catching players, wide receivers Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola and tight end Rob Gronkowski back as well as offensive lineman Sebastian Vollmer back for the game. But if you believe the news coming out of the New England camp, none of them will be at full strength. The Kansas City Chiefs are probably NOT listening to the word out of the New England Camp very much. Not only because the New England camp is notoriously tight-lipped and mendacious, but also because a team that has just won 11 games in a row doesn’t have to listen to anyone.The Chiefs are on quite a roll! Just last weekend, they went into Houston and absolutely smashed the Texans 30-0 in the first round of the playoffs. They’re doing it with smart offense and tough defense and for now, they seem unbeatable.

Who are the main characters on the Kansas City Chiefs?

Alex Smith — Quarterback Alex Smith was drafted number one overall by the San Francisco 49ers in 2005. His story has always been one of moderate success despite two great deficiencies: hand size and arm strength. The importance of arm strength is obvious — if your arm isn’t strong enough to throw the ball far down the field, it’s hard to be successful. When you watch Smith, compare his throws in your mind to others that you’ve seen. You might notice his throws looking not as snappy as other quarterbacks. More likely you can notice what you don’t see — the so-called “out pattern throws.” An out is when a wide receiver runs down the field and then perpendicularly to the sideline. The quarterback is expected to throw the ball before the wide receiver turns so it’s there for him to catch. It’s a difficult throw to make because, even more than the longer down-field throws, it has to be made with strength so defenders don’t have time to intercept it. Smith pretty much doesn’t even attempt these throws. What Smith does do, he does extremely well. He’s very athletic, able to avoid defenders trying to sack him and even to make longish dowfield scrambling runs at time. He rarely makes bad decisions that lead to interceptions or fumbles. He’s a solid but unspectacular dude.

Eric Berry — Safety Eric Berry was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma a little over a year ago. He got treatment and was back to playing shape by the time this season started. His play this season has been nothing short of inspiring. He’s back to what he was before the cancer, one of the best safeties in the league. Also, from his Wikipedia page, comes the odd but charming fact: “Berry suffers from equinophobia, a fear of horses, frequently brought on by the Kansas City Chiefs’ mascot, Warpaint. The fear was brought on after a traumatizing childhood event at a petting zoo where a horse bit him while his back was turned.”

Who are the main characters on the New England Patriots?

Bill Belichick — It all starts with coach Bill Belichick. Now the longest tenured coach in the league by far (Belichick started in New England in 2000, the next two coaches started at their jobs in 2003 and 2006!), depending on who you talk to, Belichick is thought of as either an evil genius or a benevolent one, but either way, he’s given a lot of the credit for the Patriots’ winning ways. He’s not a stereotypical football coach who screams and yells or tries to motivate his players. He doesn’t give memorable half-time speeches. He just tries (with his assistant coaches) to out-think, out-smart, and out-prepare the opposing team. Before every game, Belichick figures out what the other team is good at and what they’re bad at. Then he decides how to attack them where they’re weak and avoid falling prey to what they are good at. It seems simple, but most teams either can’t figure this out or are unable or unwilling to change what they do fast enough to adjust to their opponent.

Tom Brady — Quarterback Tom Brady is the other side of the New England Patriots coin. He’s been in New England just as long as Belichick and he gets almost as much credit. He’s widely considered one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play football. Even at age 38, he doesn’t seem to be noticeably slipping in any dimension of his game. Given the issues the Patriots have had this year with their offensive line, one of Brady’s most important qualities is his ability to anticipate what the defense is going to do, even before the play begins, and react quickly to what they actually do once the play starts. He rarely gets hit because he rarely holds onto the ball for more than a second or two. He gets it, and throws it, fast!

Rob Gronkowski — Tight end Rob Gronkowski provides an element of meat to balance Brady and Belichik’s cerebral natures. Gronkowski is a 6’6″ 265 lbs football monster. When he goes down the field to catch a pass, he often looks too big, too fast, and too skilled for the other team to have a chance at stopping him. He looks improbable, like the result of a cheat code in a video game. Then a defender hits him and every Patriots fan in the world gasps. Gronkowski’s one weakness is his health. He seems to always either be seriously injured, hobbled, or one hit away from being one of those things. Right now, reports say he’s suffering from knee and back injuries. Only time will tell if that’s true, but if it isn’t, watch out!

Who is going to win?

The Kansas City Chiefs are on an amazing run this year but the New England Patriots have been on amazing run now for more than a decade. The Chiefs are a team that’s succeeding despite some very obvious flaws, first among them their quarterback’s limited ability to make certain types of throws. The one person you don’t want to run into when your options are limited is Bill Belichick. Belichick is too good at finding and exploiting small flaws, much less giant obvious ones. The Patriots may not be able to overpower the Chiefs but over time, little by little as the game goes on, they’ll outsmart the Chiefs.