football Archives - Page 20 of 43

What is a "football move"?

Dear Sports Fan,

What the heck is a “football move”? I think I understand that a wide receiver making a catch has to catch the ball and then make a “football move” to get credit for it but I don’t get what a “football move” is. I mean, we’re watching football players play football, right? Isn’t basically everything a “football move”? Isn’t the catch itself a “football move”?

Thanks,
Alexander

Dear Alexander,

You ask a very reasonable question. It’s one that puzzles most football fans and even some football players. The phrase “football move” doesn’t actually appear in the NFL rule-books at all but it is used popularly to explain a rule that dictates whether a player has caught the football or not. This rule has always been a little controversial and it became even more so when it virtually decided a playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys earlier this year. In plain English, the rule states that in order to be considered a completed catch, a player has to catch the ball and maintain control over it long enough to do something else before the play is considered to be a completed catch. Here’s the rule in NFLese:

A forward pass is complete (by the offense) or intercepted (by the defense) if a player, who is inbounds:
(a) secures control of the ball in his hands or arms prior to the ball touching the ground; and
(b) touches the ground inbounds with both feet or with any part of his body other than his hands; and
(c) maintains control of the ball long enough, after (a) and (b) have been fulfilled, to enable him to perform any act
common to the game (i.e., maintaining control long enough to pitch it, pass it, advance with it, or avoid or ward off an
opponent, etc.).
Note 1: It is not necessary that he commit such an act, provided that he maintains control of the ball long enough to do so.
Note 2: If a player has control of the ball, a slight movement of the ball will not be considered a loss of possession. He must
lose control of the ball in order to rule that there has been a loss of possession.

I know, I know, the NFL is run by lawyers with a distinct flair for the obtuse. Still, the rule is actually not that hard to understand. I’ll do my best to explain it.

The first thing to understand is what this rule is attempting to do and why they are important. This rule is tries to set an objective line between a play that is not a completed pass and one that is. This is important because there are four possible outcomes when a quarterback throws his teammate the ball and they are widely varied in terms of their effect on the game:

An incomplete pass — if the quarterback throws the ball and no one catches it — means that the play stops and the offense gets the ball back where they started that play only instead of first down, now it’s second or instead of third, now it’s fourth.
A complete pass — when the quarterback throws the ball and his teammate catches it — means that the play continues until the receiver of the ball runs out-of-bounds or is tackled.
A complete pass followed by a fumble — after the quarterback’s teammate catches the ball, he runs around and then drops the ball — the play continues but it’s a free-for-all; whoever picks up the ball gets it, including the defensive team.
An interception — when a member of the opposing team catches the ball — the play continues and the defender can run with the ball but when he is tackled or goes out-of-bounds, his team gets to play offense.

These categories seem obvious but they get tricky at the edges. For instance, it’s intuitive that if the quarterback throws the ball and it hits the ground, it’s an incomplete pass. Likewise, if the quarterback throws the ball and it bounces off his teammates head and then hits the ground, it’s still an incomplete pass. But what if it bounces off his teammate’s hands as he’s trying to catch the ball? Still an incomplete pass but now we’re starting to feel less sure of things, right? Now, if the receiver catches the ball and runs for ten seconds, dodging defenders the whole time, and then drops the ball, that’s clearly a fumble. But what if he only runs around for five seconds? Still a fumble? What about four? What about three, two, one? Somewhere, there has to be a line between an incomplete pass and a catch followed by a fumble.

The NFL chose to define that boundary as when a player “maintains control of the ball long enough” after catching the ball and landing in-bounds to “enable him to perform any act common to the game.” Since the game in question is football, that phrase has been condensed in popular usage to a “football move.” In other words, a player has to catch the ball and hold it for long enough for him to theoretically do something else with it before it’s considered a catch. Of course, players on a football field don’t stand still very much of the time when a play is happening. This is why the last twist on this rule came into being. People don’t say that a receiver has to “catch the ball and then hold it long enough to make a football move”, they say that a player has to “catch the ball and then make a football move”. Since the NFL did not define how many seconds (or more likely tenths of a second) would be long enough to make a football move, the rule has shifted (for the purposes of reasonable enforcement) to be that a player has to demonstrate possession while he makes a football move after the catch.

I guess the only question we’re left with is “why should this be the definition of a catch?” I like to think about it like this: until a player is able to show that he’s done catching the ball and is ready and able to do something else on the field, he’s still in the process of catching the ball. Once a player is able to move on from catching the ball to dodge defenders, change direction or speed, or dive forward, then they’re done catching the ball.

Make sense? If it does, you’re ahead of everyone else. I think eventually we’ll see the NFL simply set an amount of time, probably three tenths of a second that a receiver must possess the ball before the play is considered a completed pass. That, plus biological sensors in the ball and everyone’s gloves will solve this issue for us once and for all. Until then, enjoy the debates about what exactly constitutes a “football move” and whether so-and-so made a catch or not.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

The Super Bowl is just around the corner. If you’d like to learn more about football, sign up for our Football 101 course to learn the basics of the game or Football 201 to learn all about football positions.

What is this football deflation story about?

Dear Sports Fan,

Can you explain the big story that’s going around right now about the New England Patriots intentionally deflating footballs? What the what?

Adam

Dear Adam,

When I was a kid, my Dad taught me a joke about a lawsuit between two Russian neighbors. We’ll call them Laskutin Kvetoslav Konstantinovich and Ungern Zinoviy Georgiy (this random Russian name generation website is insane!) Anyway, Laskutin sues Ungern, claiming that Ungern borrowed a cooking pot from him and returned it with a big hole in the bottom of the pot. The case goes to trial. Ungern, who happens to be a lawyer, represents himself and wins the case after arguing that the hole was in the pot when he borrowed it, the pot was in perfect condition when he returned it, and he never even borrowed the pot!

The joke (did you laugh?) is meant to poke fun at the insanity of a legal system that, by only requiring the creation of doubt about the truth to acquit a defendant, encourages lawyers to use many different arguments, even if they contradict themselves. The biggest story in football today is a scandal being variously called, “deflate-gate” and “ball-ghazi”. Even if you don’t follow football, you’ve probably heard or seen something about this. I’ll give a quick summary of the story and then explain why it reminds me so much of my Dad’s joke.

During the New England Patriots 45-7 win over the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game, Colts linebacker D’Quell Jackson intercepted a pass from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. After running to his own sidelines with the ball, Jackson handed the ball to a Colts equipment manager who noticed that the ball seemed under-inflated. He mentioned it to someone who mentioned it to someone else until it became a thing. What we now believe to be true, based on a leak from the NFL itself, as reported by Chris Mortensen on ESPN, is that 11 of the 12 balls the Patriots used on offense were significantly under-inflated.

That may not seem like much, but that’s basically the whole story. The NFL is investigating the incident and will surely be heard from sometime before the Super Bowl. In the meantime, sports fans and the sports media are in full-on freak out mode. Some are saying that this is the biggest cheating scandal since the last time the Patriots were punished for cheating in the 2007 Spygate scandal and that the Patriots should be both ashamed of themselves and punished by the league. Others are saying that this is totally normal and not a big deal. Shockingly, part of what’s helping people decide which side to be on is whether they root for the Patriots or not. In any event, partially because it’s an interesting story and partially because the two-week gap before the Super Bowl is hard to fill with stories, this has become the biggest thing in the sports world right now.

How could this happen? What happens to football before and during a game?

A reasonable person might assume that the NFL itself would be in charge of providing footballs for each game and that their officials would be in charge of handling the balls to ensure they are not tampered with. That’s not true. Like many things about football, the rules that govern the football used in a game are Byzantine and bizarre. Even in articles from reputable sources, there are discrepancies about how it’s supposed to work, but as far as I can gather, this is basically what is supposed to happen:

Before the game, each team brings 12 (24 if there is bad weather predicted) balls to the refs. These balls don’t have to be new, they can be handled, scuffed up, or conditioned by the teams.
135 minutes (why? who knows?) before the game, the refs check the balls to make sure they are inflated properly — between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch. This can be done with either a pressure gauge or a scale or both. If the balls are off, the refs inflate them or deflate them themselves. When they are good, the refs initial them with a sharpie before giving them back to the teams’ equipment managers or ball-boys. Read a behind-the-scenes account of this here.
During the game, each team uses their own twelve (or 24) balls when they are on offense.
Since 1999, the league itself has provided special kicking balls to be used by both teams’ kickers and punters. These balls, sometimes called ‘K’ balls, are brand new but each team is given 45 minutes under supervision of a referee to mess with the kicking balls before the game.

As you can tell, the rules seem to be written with the intention of allowing teams (primarily quarterbacks, since they handle the ball the most during the game) to customize the balls they are going to use on offense within reason. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the league simply provide brand new balls for each game and keep them under supervision throughout the game?

Okay, now tell us why this is like that joke

Imagine that instead of two Russians, it’s the Patriots who are in court and need to come up with a defense. So far, the Patriots have not said much about this issue other than that they will cooperate with the league investigation. If they were to defend themselves and they had Ungern as their lawyer, he might argue that tampering with the balls is totally normal and everyone does it, that sure, they deflated the balls but no one really knows whether deflating the balls would provide an advantage, and that you can’t prove they did anything to the balls anyway!

Everyone does it

In most arenas, this is not the best defense against cheating but in sports it seems to fare a little bit better. Sports is a culture where rule-breaking is acceptable up to a certain point. You’ll often hear football announcers say that there is “holding on every play.” It’s true, if referees decided to apply the strict letter of the law, they could call a penalty on every play. What ends up happening is that in every game, there is a level of holding that is accepted and what really gets called is holding more blatant than normal. No one thinks a player that holds is cheating. The same thing might be true about doctoring footballs but until this scandal, it wasn’t widely known. Since this scandal has broken out, we’ve heard reports that quarterback Brad Johnson paid $7,500 before the Super Bowl in 2003 to scuff up the balls to his liking. Deadspin dug up some footage of announcers discussing a conversation they had with Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers who told them that he likes to inflate his teams footballs past the legal limit and hope that the referees don’t catch him. If tampering with footballs is normal (and the NFL has certainly created rules and an enforcement plan with enough wiggle room to allow for this) than the worst we could say about the Patriots is that they tampered more blatantly than normal and got caught.

Deflating the balls didn’t help

Everyone in football seems to have strongly held beliefs about the condition of the football but what’s the truth? Does over-inflating the ball make it fly faster and straighter, easier to hold on to, and better to catch? Aaron Rodgers thinks so. Or is it under-inflating the ball that makes all of those things better? Tom Brady certainly thinks that is true. In 2011 he was quoted as saying he loved when teammate Rob Gronkowski spikes the ball, “because I like the deflated ball. But I feel bad for that football, because he puts everything he can into those spikes.” But what the heck does he know? In a 2006 New York Times article by Judy Battista, a quarterback who played with Brady mentions that Brady likes his balls, “so broken in that it looked as if he had been using them since junior high school” and that Brady insists on rubbing the balls down before using them to rid them of a substance that coats the balls when they are made. Brady was quotes as saying, “The preservative on the football, when you get it off, it’s easier to get a grip.” This is despite the fact that the maker of the balls is quoted as saying in that same article that that substance makes the balls “about as sticky as a Post-it note, and that improves the grip.”

Meanwhile, in the universe of kickers, there seems to be a similar disagreement. A Business Insider article by Tony Manfred reports that “In 1999, the NFL switched to special “K balls” for special teams plays because they were paranoid that players were manipulating regular balls to make them fly higher and straighter” and quotes from a Sports Illustrated article (now lost from posterity because they basically destroyed their online archive) saying that “New footballs are hard, unforgiving, smallish (with a correspondingly small sweet spot) and coated with a film that makes them slippery. They don’t travel as far as game-worn balls, and they can’t be “guided” as accurately as roundish, softer balls. When you see a kicker squeeze a ball, it’s because he wants to soften it and make it rounder.” But wait, but wait, now that the Patriots are accused of being cheaters, Jason La Canfora writes for CBS in this article that sources of his from the Baltimore Ravens are complaining that in their game against the Patriots, “Baltimore’s kicking and punting units were not getting their normal depth and distance, and some believed the balls they were using may have been deflated.”

So, which is it? Is a soft ball better or a hard ball? Is there a scientist in the house?

The league can’t prove anything

It’s going to be difficult for the NFL to prove wrong-doing in this case. Oh, the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that someone did something to those balls on behalf of the Patriots but how and when, unless they were caught on video doing it, is going to be tough to prove. Were the balls under-inflated to begin with and the refs simply didn’t notice or didn’t care until the Colts complained? Were the balls properly inflated, approved, and then later doctored by a member of the Patriots? If so, who was it? Did any of the key players or coaches ask for this to happen or did a ball-boy or equipment manager do it himself?

At best, the league may be able to prove that someone tampered with the balls but not exactly who. In that case, I think that the NFL should tread somewhat lightly on this issue. It would be tough to come down hard on the Patriots, arguing that the lack of institutional control needed to prevent this type of tampering is itself worthy of serious punishment. After all, it’s still widely thought that the NFL was seriously negligent at best and totally corrupt at worst in its handling of the Ray Rice domestic abuse case in the past year.

Short-term, I can’t imagine that this story will affect the Super Bowl. The game between the Colts and Patriots will not be replayed, nor will the Patriots be barred from playing the Super Bowl. Coach Bill Belichick may be suspended but my guess is that the suspension would start after the Super Bowl is over. There will definitely be fines or draft picks that get taken away, but not organization changing ones. The rules governing balls will almost definitely be changed to prevent this from happening again and football will keep flying along, under, over, or properly inflated.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

p.s. In case you’re looking for humor about deflate-gate that actually makes you laugh, take a look at this or this.

What is a false start in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a false start in football? I get that it’s a penalty against the offense and that when it happens the play stops before it even starts but what I don’t understand is why it’s called or what a team can do to avoid it.

Thanks,
Chelsea

Dear Chelsea,

You’ve got most of it already but I’ll fill in the rest as best I can. A false start is a penalty in football that can only be called against the team with possession of the ball. The penalty for a false start is that the offense has to move the ball back five yards (or half the distance to their own goal line if they are within five yards of it) and start the play over again. A false start penalizes the offense if one of their players moves in an illegal way before the ball is snapped to start the play. One thing that’s cool about the penalty is that its inflexibility exhibits and reinforces one of the primary characteristics of football: it’s stop and start, tactical nature.

As we covered in our article answering What is a snap in football? every football play begins when the center snaps the ball backwards between his legs to another player. During the time before that happens, there are a separate set of rules that dictate what the teams on the field can do. For example, the offensive team is allowed to gather to talk (called a huddle) but not if there are more than eleven people in the group. The false start is a penalty in that set of rules that dictate what a team, specifically the one with the ball, can do before the ball is snapped. Roughly speaking, the offensive team is supposed to set themselves up in a particular way, pause, and then without moving, snap the ball to start the play. As you might expect, there are some technicalities and exceptions that dictate how this must happen: there must be at least seven offensive players set up right on the line of scrimmage (where the ball is set up at the start of the play); when the ball is snapped, one and only one player is allowed to be running around and he must be moving backwards or sideways and may not be one of the seven players set up on the line of scrimmage. The false start is called when one of a variety of things happen to violate these rules:

A player in the offensive line “moves abruptly” once they are set up. This rule is so minute that even a flinch of the head will be called a false start.
Any player on the offense moves “in such manner as to lead defense to believe snap has started.”
The quarterback moves or acts in a way that is an “obvious attempt to draw an opponent offside”. (on this one, you might rightly be thinking that TV commentators often talk about quarterbacks trying to draw the defense offside by shouting like they are about to start the play. This is true but because those shouts could theoretically convey information to the quarterback’s teammates, they are allowed even though we all know exactly what they’re trying to do. It’s a conundrum wrapped in an enigma.)

The false start is one of the most typical penalties in football. No single penalty defines the sport as well as the false start. If you wanted to explain football to a fan of soccer or basketball or hockey or any number of other sports, the easiest way to do it would be to say that football is like those sports except that everything stops between plays. When a player is tackled or runs out-of-bounds, the teams have forty seconds to set up again for the next play. It’s a stop-and-start game. This makes it look boring to a lot of people used to the fluidity of other sports but it’s also responsible for the complexity and tactical interest that football and really only football of all the sports has. If football is a game where the teams are supposed to stop and then set up in a static way before starting again then the false start is the penalty that makes sure the offense has really stopped before they start the next play.

The false start also represents a failure of synchronization. The players on the offensive side of a football team train tirelessly to move in exact unison. A successful offense is one that moves with precision as one unit. You’ll often see quarterbacks pass the ball to a spot, knowing that by the time the ball gets there, their teammate will be there to catch the ball. Every successful offensive play is a triumph of moving in unison. When players move out of time with each other during a play, the play usually fails. When one player moves out of sync before the play begins, it’s a false start and their whole team is penalized. One of the funniest things to see on a football field is what happens when the one player who moves out of time is the player who starts the play with the ball, the center. When this happens, all his teammates move while he stays still. The mistake is really the center’s but because the play doesn’t start until he snaps the ball, the foul is officially called on his teammates, like this:

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Announcing Football 201: All About Positions

The Super Bowl is coming up quickly but there’s still enough time to impress your friends or family at their Super Bowl party! In Football 101 we went over why people like football, what down and distance are, how football scoring works, the inside scoop on fantasy football and football betting, how to decipher TV scoreboard graphics, and a great way to start having fun while watching football. Today, we’re announcing the release of our newest course, Football 201. This one is all about the mysteries of football positions. You’ll learn all about each of various positions in football: quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tight end, offensive line, defensive line, linebacker, defensive back, and kicker. Our content covers the basics of how to identify each position when you watch football, what responsibilities players in each position are expected to fulfill, and what characters are usually attracted to playing or rooting for each position. At the end of the course you will get a fully unaccredited diploma of graduation, which you can hang on your wall with pride. If you enjoy the course, (and I hope you do!), I’d be thrilled to have you as a regular subscriber to our daily or weekly digests and for Football 301, coming soon! If you haven’t taken Football 101 yet and would like to, click here, or sign up in the form below.

Get started now

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer

2015 NFL Championship Weekend 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:

Championship Weekend

Sunday, January 18, at 3:05 p.m. ET, on Fox

Green Bay Packers 22, at Seattle Seahawks 28

This game was one of the craziest football games I’ve ever seen. It’s probably going to have been one of the craziest football games your sports-fan friends or colleagues have ever seen either. The Seahawks were expected to win but came out incredibly flat in the first half. They couldn’t seem to do anything good on offense, and although their great defense was limiting the damage by holding the Packers to field goals on all but one Packers’ possession, things looked bleak for Seattle. At half-time the score was 16-0 in favor of the Packers. The Seahawks played better in the second half but it wasn’t until late in the fourth quarter that crazy things started to happen. With a little less than four minutes remaining in the game, the Seahawks were down by 12 points. They drove down the field, got a touchdown. Now they were down by five points with a little more than two minutes left. They attempted an onside kick, which is when they kick the ball off but instead of kicking it all the way down the field for the other team to get, they kick it mostly sideways and up in the air and try to run down the field to get it themselves. This move, which works about 20% of the time, was successful. The Seahawks got the ball, and very quickly moved it down the field to get another touchdown! Now they are up by one point and decide to go for a two point conversion to make the lead three instead. This move, which is successful about 50% of the time, also worked out for the Seahawks. So, the Seahawks have a three point lead but there’s almost a minute and a half left in the game. The Packers get the ball, and tie the game with a field goal to send it to overtime. In overtime, the Seahawks get the ball and score a touchdown to win the game.

Line to say to football fans: Whoa! That was the craziest game ever!
Line to say to Seahawks fans: You never gave up hope? That was so courageous of you and your team paid you back!
Line to say to Packers fans: I am so, so sorry. Can I buy you lunch today?

Sunday, January 18, at 6:40 p.m. ET, on CBS

Indianapolis Colts 7, at New England Patriots 45

This game had none of the drama of the earlier game. The two teams had played earlier this season and the Patriots won 42-20 mostly because they Colts could not stop them from running the ball whenever and wherever they wanted to. Despite New England coach, Bill Belichick’s, well-deserved reputation for creatively inventing new game plans to match every situation his team is in, when something works, he’s not afraid to go back to it. The Colts could not stop the Patriot’s run game in this game either. Patriots running back LeGarrette Blount ran for 148 yards and three touchdowns. The game was played under somewhat strange circumstances, an unseasonably warm but fierce rain-storm and potentially with under-inflated balls (Yahoo Sports went with the clever “deflate-gate” rather than the obvious “ball-gate”) but you get the feeling that nothing was going to stop the Patriots in this game.

Line to say to football fans: The second game wasn’t quite as much fun as the first, huh?
Line to say to Patriots fans: How you feeling about facing the Seahawks in the Super Bowl?
Line to say to Colts fans: Hard to lose but better in some ways to lose that way than the way the Packers lost.

What’s Next: The Super Bowl! New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, February 1, 6:30 p.m. on NBC. Tons of coverage on our website in the next two weeks.

If you want to learn the basics of football in time for this year’s Super Bowl, sign up for our Football 101 course. It’s the easiest way to learn football, and I promise that by the time you’re through, you’ll be able to impress the football fan in your life with your newfound knowledge.

In this free course, you’ll learn all about why people like football, what down and distance are, how football scoring works, the inside scoop on fantasy football and football betting, how to decipher TV scoreboard graphics, and finally my favorite way to start having fun while watching football. At the end of the course you will get a fully unaccredited diploma of graduation, which you can hang on your wall with pride. If you enjoy the course, (and I hope you do!), I’d be thrilled to have you as a regular subscriber to our daily or weekly digests and for Football 201, coming soon!

Get started now

Dear Sports Fan's got you covered for the NFL Championship games today

If you’re going to be watching football today but don’t feel 100% confident that you’ll understand all of the intricacies of the game, keep your laptop, tablet, or phone around. I’m going to be live-Tweeting/Facebooking/Fancredding/Google-Plussing the game with explanations and observations. If you’re not already following me on one of those platforms, do it! I’ll also be available to answer specific questions you have. Hit me up on any of those social networks or send an email to dearsportsfan@gmail.com.

There’s only three games left in the National Football League (NFL) season and two of them are today. At 3:05 p.m. ET on Fox the Green Bay Packers play against the Seattle Seahawks for the National Football Conference (NFC) championship. At 6:40 p.m. ET on CBS, the Indianapolis Colts play against the New England Patriots for the American Football League (AFC) championship. The winners of these two games will play each other in the Super Bowl in two weeks.

If you’d like to catch up on some background material before the game, there’s a variety of option on the website. My friend Brendan and I recorded a brief podcast about each of today’s games. You can find the Seattle vs. Green Bay podcast here and the New England vs. Indianapolis podcast here. Both are also available for download on iTunes. For a glass half-full/glass half-broken take on the games, check out the Good Cop, Bad Cop Precaps of the games. If you haven’t already, you should sign up for our brand new and totally free Football 101 email course. In just eight days, you’ll understand the most critical building blocks of football.

2015 NFL Championship Weekend Good Gop, Bad Cop Precaps

It’s the NFL Championship round weekend. There’s a counter-intuitive waxing and waning in the football world around this time. This weekend’s games are the second most important games of the year. Win this one and you go to the Super Bowl. They are among the most exciting games of the year. But at the same time, there’s only two of them. After weekends of 11-16 games all fall and then two weekends in a row of four games each in the earlier playoff rounds, two games seems like just a little bit of football. In this way interest wanes as it waxes.

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.

Championship Weekend

Sunday, January 18, at 3:05 p.m. ET, on Fox

Green Bay Packers at Seattle Seahawks

Good cop: The best quarterback in the league, Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers, against the best defense in the league, the Seattle Seahawks?!! Sign me up for that! Seattle had the record for loudest stadium in the world stolen from them earlier this season by the Kansas City fans! My guess is that they take it back on Sunday! They make so much noise that they need to be monitored for seismic consequences! Yikes!!

Bad cop: The story of this game is either going to be ‘quarterback on one leg plays hero and wins against all odds’ or ‘smothering defense key to back-to-back championship run.’ Either one is too cliched and mundane for words. Show me something new, please.

Sunday, January 18, at 6:40 p.m. ET, on CBS

Indianapolis Colts at New England Patriots

Good cop: Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady! Andrew Luck, Andrew Luck, Andrew Luck! This game is a massive battle between two quarterbacks at the top of their games!! It’s old school vs. new school! Both teams have earned their spot in this championship game! The Patriots came back from being down by 14 points twice against their playoff arch-nemesis, the Baltiomre Ravens! The Colts went into Denver and took down the big, bad, Super Bowl or bust Denver Broncos!

Bad cop: Indianapolis beat Cincinnati without their best player, A.J. Green, and then Denver without their best player, Peyton Manning, being healthy enough to play at even close to his normal level. New England needed to pull out all their trickiest trick plays to beat the Ravens, a team with one of the worst pass defenses around. This game features two average teams masquerading as great teams. Bah.

Why shouldn't football players play the Settlers of Catan?

Kevin Clark wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal this week where he describes, with some glee, how the board game Settlers of Catan has become an obsession of some members of the Green Bay Packers football team this season. The article has gone viral. It’s the number one trending topic on Facebook, which tempts users to click on it with the teaser, “Green Bay Packers’ players ‘completely addicted’ to board game, tight end says.” The article is currently the number one search result on Google’s web search for “Settlers of Catan” and also for “Wall Street Journal.” It’s number one on the Wall Street Journal’s self-reported Most Popular articles right now too. The article clearly struck a nerve.

Wikipedia describes Settlers of Catan as a multi-player board game where “players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players are rewarded points as their settlements grow; the first to reach a set number of points is the winner.” Green Bay Packer’s backup quarterback Matt Flynn is quoted in Clark’s article describing the game as “a nonviolent version of Risk.” The Green Bay Packers, especially their offensive line, love it and seem to approach it with a competitive zeal close to that they show for football. Here’s Clark:

The competitive nature of the Green Bay’s Catan tradition is now legendary in the locker room. Two weeks ago, Linsley won the game, but Bakhtiari, who typically hosts the games at his house, had briefly gone outside to cook a chicken for the group. He furiously protested Linsley’s victory because of this.

If one half of the appeal of the article is the humor in a group of grown men taking a board game too seriously, the other half seems to be pointing out that it’s funny for football players to play a game that is as intellectual and intricate as Settlers of Catan. That’s a theme the article hits from start to finish:

There may not be a more unusual bonding tradition in the NFL than the gang of Packers who get together regularly to play a board game called “Settlers of Catan.”

Any player in the locker room will readily admit that it’s a nerdy endeavor.

“The rules of the game can be complex—making it all the funnier that the Packers have embraced it.”

The Packers’ embrace of the game become such a phenomenon that [a local gaming store, Gnome Games] put a sign up that said “Be cool like [Packers tight end] Justin Perillo, play Catan!” The Packer players quickly noticed it. “We thought it was hilarious,” Linsley said.

The message is clear: it’s funny for football players to play a Settlers of Catan because football is cool but not very intellectual and Settlers of Catan is intellectual but not very cool. I believe that the article has been viewed and forwarded and shared and tweeted so many times primarily because of the perceived incongruity of football players spending their leisure time in an activity that’s so unlike football.

I don’t blame Clark one bit for taking this approach. Not only is this a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” moment but I enjoyed the article. It was well written and it made me want to hang out with the Green Bay Packers. What bothers me is the underlying assumption about football not being an intellectual pursuit. A big part of my rationale for writing Dear Sports Fan is that I don’t believe the gap between sports and non-sport activities is as great as many people think it is and I don’t believe there should be as large a divide between sports fans and non-sports fans as there is. This article and the response to it widens the cultural divide over sports ever so slightly by encouraging people to think it’s unusual and funny for football players to play an intellectual board game like Settlers of Catan.

Football is an incredibly complex game that requires not only amazing physical feats from its players but also remarkable mental acuity. Every player is expected to learn (simple memorization will fail when decisions need to be made so quickly and under such intense pressure) up to a thousand plays in their own time using mostly diagrams. Then, when a play is called in the middle of a football game, they have to recall what they and at least what their neighboring teammates do to execute the play. And it’s not like the play names help very much. Football language is as obtuse as diner short-hand and each team has their own language. Here’s an example of a play call as described by Kansas City quarterback Alex Smith in a Kansas City Star article:

“There’s times I’m in the huddle and I might go, ‘Alright, listen up for the call here fellas,’ and they know it’s gonna be a doozy,” Smith said. “We’ve got ‘shift to halfback twin right open, swap 72 all-go special halfback shallow cross wide open.’”

Understanding a play call is just the start. NFL football players need to be tuned into the exact situation within each game and have an encyclopedic understanding of their opponents. Nowhere is this more true than in New England, where the Patriots head coach Bill Belichick terrorizes his team with his own perfect recall and penchant for impromptu pop quizzes. You know how I know this? Another article by Kevin Clark (and Daniel Barbarisi) in the Wall Street Journal! Here’s an excerpt from that piece:

“According to players, if a younger member of the team offers an answer, Belichick will often ask a studious veteran if that player is correct. Evans particularly remembers Belichick doing this with star quarterback Tom Brady and then-backup Matt Cassel. As Evans tells it, Belichick would ask a detailed question: “Hey, we’re in the high red zone, it’s second-and-six from the 18. What’s Indianapolis’ favorite blitz?” Cassel would answer “overloading the weak side.” Then Belichick would turn to Brady and ask “do you concur?” On the times Brady said the backup was incorrect, the room would erupt with laughter.”

I don’t mean to be a kill-joy. There is something instinctively unexpected about 350 pound world-class athletes sitting down to play Settlers of Catan. Kevin Clark’s Wall Street Journal article captured that humor with grace and not a trace of meanness. The problem is that the article and our enjoyment of it furthers some unnecessary and damaging misconceptions about the nature of sports, sports fans, and athletes. The Green Bay Packers compete in a high-stakes workplace with intense physical and mental demands. Is it really surprising that some of them keep themselves primed intellectually and competitively by playing an brainy board game?

2015 AFC Championship Preview Indianapolis at New England

Hi everyone,

It’s a very exciting time in the football season for football fans and non-fans alike. There are only three games left! That’s right. This Sunday, the four teams left in the playoffs will play in two semifinal games which are confusingly called the NFC and AFC Championship games, and the winners will go on to play in the Super Bowl on February 1st. To preview this weekend’s action, I asked my friend Brendan to come back on the podcast.

The AFC Championship Game

NFL Football — Sunday, January 18, 2015 — Indianapolis Colts at New England Patriots, 6:40 p.m. ET on CBS.

The one thing television commentators are most likely to say about this game.
The one thing we would say if we were television commentators.
The player on each team most likely to be the star if their team wins the game and why. For New England, our choices were Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski (but also Legarrette Blount and Darrell Revis because we had trouble choosing.) For Indianapolis, our choices were T.Y Hilton and Vontae Davis.
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.

2015 NFC Championship Preview Green Bay at Seattle

Hi everyone,

The NFC Championship Game

NFL Football — Sunday, January 18, 2015 — Green Bay Packers at Seattle Seahawks, 3:05 p.m. ET on Fox.

The one thing television commentators are most likely to say about this game.
The one thing we would say if we were television commentators.
The player on each team most likely to be the star if their team wins the game and why. For Seattle, our choices were Marshawn Lynch and Luke Willson. For Green Bay, our choices were Aaron Rodgers and Eddy Lacy.
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.